Chemical Element

A Chemical Element is a species of atoms having the same number of protons in their atomic numbers.

• AKA: Element
• Context:
  • It can range from being a Natural Chemical Element to a being Synthetic Chemical Element.
  • It can be divided in 3 main categories: Metals, Metalloids, Nonmetals.
  • It has an Atomic Nucleus.
  • It can be associated with Zero or more Neutrons, to create Isotopes.
  • It can be a part of a Chemical Compound.
  • It can form molecules.
  • It can be represented in a Periodic Table of Chemical Elements.
  • …
• Example(s):
  • Hydrogen (H).
  • Helium (He)
  • Carbon (C).
  • Oxygen (O).
  • Barium (Ba).
  • Copper (Cu).
  • Uranium (U).
  • see more: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/List_of_chemical_elements
• Counter-Example(s):
  • A Chemical Compound.
  • A Molecule.
  • An Isotope.
  • A Subatomic Particle
• See: Chemical, Atomic Nucleus, Atom, Atomic Number, Proton, Atomic Nucleus, Metal, Metalloid, Non-Metal, Carbon, Oxygen, Silicon, Arsenic, Aluminium, Impurity, Periodic Table, Atom, Proton, Atomic Nucleus, Atomic Number.

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References

2017

• (Wikipedia, 2017) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_element Retrieved:2017-7-9.
  • A chemical element or element is a species of atoms having the same number of protons in their atomic nuclei (i.e. the same atomic number, or Z). There are 118 elements that have been identified, of which the first 94 occur naturally on Earth with the remaining 24 being synthetic elements. There are 80 elements that have at least one stable isotope and 38 that have exclusively radioactive isotopes, which decay over time into other elements. Iron is the most abundant element (by mass) making up Earth, while oxygen is the most common element in the Earth's crust.

    Chemical elements constitute all of the ordinary matter of the universe. However astronomical observations suggest that ordinary observable matter makes up only about 15% of the matter in the universe: the remainder is dark matter; the composition of this is unknown, but it is not composed of chemical elements. The two lightest elements, hydrogen and helium, were mostly formed in the Big Bang and are the most common elements in the universe. The next three elements (lithium, beryllium and boron) were formed mostly by cosmic ray spallation, and are thus rarer than those that follow. Formation of elements with from 6 to 26 protons occurred and continues to occur in main sequence stars via stellar nucleosynthesis. The high abundance of oxygen, silicon, and iron on Earth reflects their common production in such stars. Elements with greater than 26 protons are formed by supernova nucleosynthesis in supernovae, which, when they explode, blast these elements as supernova remnants far into space, where they may become incorporated into planets when they are formed.

    The term "element" is used for atoms with a given number of protons (regardless of whether or not they are ionized or chemically bonded, e.g. hydrogen in water) as well as for a pure chemical substance consisting of a single element (e.g. hydrogen gas). For the second meaning, the terms "elementary substance" and "simple substance" have been suggested, but they have not gained much acceptance in English chemical literature, whereas in some other languages their equivalent is widely used (e.g. French ', Russian '). A single element can form multiple substances differing in their structure; they are called allotropes of the element.

    When different elements are chemically combined, with the atoms held together by chemical bonds, they form chemical compounds. Only a minority of elements are found uncombined as relatively pure minerals. Among the more common of such native elements are copper, silver, gold, carbon (as coal, graphite, or diamonds), and sulfur. All but a few of the most inert elements, such as noble gases and noble metals, are usually found on Earth in chemically combined form, as chemical compounds. While about 32 of the chemical elements occur on Earth in native uncombined forms, most of these occur as mixtures. For example, atmospheric air is primarily a mixture of nitrogen, oxygen, and argon, and native solid elements occur in alloys, such as that of iron and nickel.

    The history of the discovery and use of the elements began with primitive human societies that found native elements like carbon, sulfur, copper and gold. Later civilizations extracted elemental copper, tin, lead and iron from their ores by smelting, using charcoal. Alchemists and chemists subsequently identified many more; almost all of the naturally occurring elements were known by 1900.

    The properties of the chemical elements are summarized in the periodic table, which organizes the elements by increasing atomic number into rows ("periods") in which the columns ("groups") share recurring ("periodic") physical and chemical properties. Save for unstable radioactive elements with short half-lives, all of the elements are available industrially, most of them in low degrees of impurities.

2009

• (WordNet, 2009) ⇒ http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=chemical%20element
  • S: (n) chemical element, element (any of the more than 100 known substances (of which 92 occur naturally) that cannot be separated into simpler substances and that singly or in combination constitute all matter)

• (Wikipedia, 2009) ⇒ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_nucleus
  • The nucleus of an atom is the very dense region, consisting of nucleons (protons and neutrons), at the center of an atom. Almost all of the mass in an atom is made up from the protons and neutrons in the nucleus, with a very small contribution from the orbiting electrons.
  • The diameter of the nucleus is in the range of 1.6 fm (1.6 × 10−15 m) (for a proton in light hydrogen) to about 15 fm (for the heaviest atoms, such as uranium). These dimensions are much smaller than the size of the atom itself by a factor of about 23,000 (uranium) to about 145,000 (hydrogen).
  • The branch of physics concerned with studying and understanding the atomic nucleus, including its composition and the forces which bind it together, is called nuclear physics

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