Talk:Chemical element
From Academic Kids
"A chemical element (sometimes called simply element) is a unique atom characterized by the number of protons in its nucleus"
an element is not a unique atom. That implies that each element has exactly one atom. Blatantly not true. I was searching for some better wording however...
"A chemical element is characterised by a given number of nuclear protons - it represents the class of all atoms that have that number of protons in their nucleus."
Alloys are not necessarily mixtures because they are (usually) single phase materials with a different structure than the parent metals. The truth is that the Daltonian approach where compounds (containing molecules) have a single stoichiometry simply does not work for a lot of non-organic chemicals and certainly not for metal alloys.
nor is an element a material...
because then the statement 'methane contains the element carbon' would not be correct.
This confusion is generally caused by high school chemistry textbooks which give labels to various types of material (mixtures, colloids, solutions, etc etc etc) with "element" being an "elementally pure" type of material. Unfortunately "real" chemists rarely use that definition.
Element is an abstract concept which defines a certain set of 'objects' in the real world. Just like "isotope".
= Great photo gallery
User:RTC/element photos is a great comparison table of all the elements.--Menchi 20:44, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)
