A chemical element is one of those squares on the periodic table that adorns many a classroom wall. Sure. But what is an element really? It is a more subtle question that you might realise. To get to ...

A basic building block of matter. There are 118 chemical elements, 94 of which occur in nature. The additional 24 are created in labs. See rare earth elements and isotope. THIS DEFINITION IS FOR ...

Recognize these rows and columns? You may remember a detail or two about this mighty table’s organization from a long-ago chemistry class. Elements are ordered according to their number of protons, or ...

The periodic table of chemical elements, often called the periodic table, organizes all discovered chemical elements in rows (called periods) and columns (called groups) according to increasing atomic ...

Electronegativity, an essential characteristic of all elements in the periodic table, measures an atom's ability to attract electrons towards itself within a chemical bond. This vital theoretical ...

An element is a substance that cannot be broken down into any other substance. Every element is made up of its own type of atom. This is why the chemical elements are all very different from each ...