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A chemical element, often simply called an element, is a type of atom which has a specific number of protons in its atomic nucleus (i.e., a specific atomic number, or Z). [ 1 ] The definitive visualisation of all 118 elements is the periodic table of the elements , whose history along the principles of the periodic law was one of the founding ...
t. e. A chemical element is a chemical substance that cannot be broken down into other substances by chemical reactions. The basic particle that constitutes a chemical element is the atom. Elements are identified by the number of protons in their nucleus, [ 1 ] known as the element's atomic number. [ 2 ]
The periodic table, also known as the periodic table of the elements, is an ordered arrangement of the chemical elements into rows (" periods ") and columns (" groups "). It is an icon of chemistry and is widely used in physics and other sciences. It is a depiction of the periodic law, which states that when the elements are arranged in order ...
The synthetic elements are those with atomic numbers 95–118, as shown in purple on the accompanying periodic table: [ 1 ] these 24 elements were first created between 1944 and 2010. The mechanism for the creation of a synthetic element is to force additional protons into the nucleus of an element with an atomic number lower than 95.
Oxygen is the third most abundant chemical element in the universe, after hydrogen and helium.[67] About 0.9% of the Sun's mass is oxygen.[18] Oxygen constitutes 49.2% of the Earth's crustby mass[68]as part of oxide compounds such as silicon dioxideand is the most abundant element by mass in the Earth's crust.
Atoms are the basic particles of the chemical elements. An atom consists of a nucleus of protons and generally neutrons, surrounded by an electromagnetically bound swarm of electrons. The chemical elements are distinguished from each other by the number of protons that are in their atoms. For example, any atom that contains 11 protons is sodium ...
A period on the periodic table is a row of chemical elements. All elements in a row have the same number of electron shells. Each next element in a period has one more proton and is less metallic than its predecessor. Arranged this way, elements in the same group (column) have similar chemical and physical properties, reflecting the periodic law.
The first letter is always capitalized. While the symbol is often a contraction of the element's name, it may sometimes not match the element's English name; for example, "Pb" for lead (from Latin plumbum) or "W" for tungsten (from German Wolfram). Elements which have only temporary systematic names are given temporary three-letter symbols (e.g ...