The Element (as pertaining to chemistry)

An element is a type of matter which cannot be broken down into other elements. Once, they were thought to be the building blocks of all matter, and while this is true in a way, we now know that there are other "materials" which are the building blocks of elements.

Elements that we run into every day include Oxygen (gas), Carbon (solid), and Hydrogen (gas). In fact, we encounter many of the 112 known elements every day, altho hardly ever in a pure form. The closest thing to a pure element that you have seen is any one of the materials we call metals. Often the metal in use is a mixture of elements, but you will find relatively pure samples of Aluminum, Copper, and Nickel, among others. Much more frequently, you will encounter mixtures of elements, such as water (One Oxygen element, connected to two Hydrogen elements, plus any number of impurities dissolved in the sample).

Chemically, an element is an atom which has a fixed number of protons. Oxygen contains 8, Carbon has 6, an Hydrogen, the simplest atom, has only 1. Each of these elements will have varying numbers of electrons and neutrons, which will effect their property's to some extent, but the proton is what defines the element.

There is much more to elements than this simple overview, but to really cover it well this page would turn into an entire chemistry text.