chemical element

A basic concept of chemistry refers to a group of atoms with the same number of protons.

The concept of elements originated from the four elements of water, earth, fire and air in ancient Greece and the five elements of gold, wood, water, fire and earth in ancient China. The concept of elements with scientific form was put forward by British chemist R Boyle in17th century. Macroscopically, he defined elements as primitive substances or completely pure substances that are not composed of any other substances, that is, substances that cannot be decomposed by general chemical methods. /kloc-A.L. lavoisier, a French chemist in the 0/8th century, defined elements as "the end point that can be reached through analysis" and gave the first recognized list of real chemical elements. After the theory of atoms and molecules was put forward, chemical elements were defined as a general term for a class of atoms with the same chemical properties.

Modern physics and chemical research reveal that the chemical properties of elements are mainly determined by the number of protons (or nuclear charges) in the nucleus, and the essence of chemical process is the electromagnetic interaction of electrons outside the nucleus, which leads to all chemical phenomena discussed so far. Since the nucleus can be transformed, so can the chemical elements.