Element
Definition
An essential or characteristic part of something abstract.
Description
In chemistry, an element is a pure substance consisting only of atoms that all have the same numbers of protons in their atomic nuclei. Unlike chemical compounds, chemical elements cannot be broken down into simpler substances by chemical means. The number of protons in the nucleus is the defining property of an element, and is referred to as its atomic number (represented by the symbol Z) – all atoms with the same atomic number are atoms of the same element. All of the baryonic matter of the universe is composed of chemical elements. When different elements undergo chemical reactions, atoms are rearranged into new compounds held together by chemical bonds. Only a minority of elements, such as silver and gold, are found uncombined as relatively pure native element minerals. Nearly all other naturally-occurring elements occur in the Earth as compounds or mixtures. Air is primarily a mixture of the elements nitrogen, oxygen, and argon, though it does contain compounds including carbon dioxide and water.
Composition
Quarks
Leptons
Gauge Bosons
Scalar Bosons
Categories of Elements
- Primordial
- Abundance of elements in Earth’s crust
- From decay
- Synthetic
States of an element
- Plasma
- Gas
- Liquid
- Solid
Why do we need to comprehend Elements?
All chemical compounds, as well as all life itself, originated from these pure substances, and therefore to understand the combined substances, we must first understand the fundamental substances.
It will allow us to know how combined substances are formed, but more importantly, how these combined substances can be separated again into their pure elemental form.
Why do we need to comprehend Elements?
Many products today combine many components, which are bound together, are hard to separate, both from a physical standpoint, but also from a chemical way too as a lot of energy is needed to separate these materials.
This results in a lot of waste and forces people to throw away products that could have otherwise been easily kept if only maintainability and repairability were considered doing the development of products.