Comment about Elements

I will have quite a bit more to say about elements later on in this lesson and in the course, but at the moment just let me say that over the years and over the centuries, people have tried to figure out what were the simplest possible things, the things which could not be further broken down, and called them elements. The number of things considered to be elements has increased considerably over the years. At one point air, earth, fire, and water were considered to be the elements. Air and earth are now known to be mixtures, fire is a form of energy released in a chemical reaction, and water is a compound. Other materials have supplanted these four as elements. Currently, we have about 90 naturally occurring elements and another dozen or so have been artificially created.

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E-mail instructor: Sue Eggling