What is the difference between an atom and an element?
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I could ask you things like:
- What are the elements in water? (A: Hydrogen and oxygen)
- What is the most common element in air? (A: Nitrogen)
- What elements are in this wire? (A: I guess probably copper)
An atom however refers to the smallest unit of an element. Often we when we talk about atoms we are not speaking about any particular element, but atoms in general.
We can talk about an atom of oxygen, the same as we can talk about a pound of apples. We never talk about an element of oxygen. That would be like talking about a fruit of apples.
Apples are a type of fruit, as oxygen is a type of element. Talking about atoms is more like talking about a single fruit, and we might not mention or care which type of fruit we are talking about. We might say things like "I'll bring sandwiches for everyone, and can you please bring a dozen fruits for the picnic?"
So we could ask, how many atoms are in the human body in the same way we could ask how many fruits are in the fruit bowl. The answer is a number, whatever that number is. The number of atoms in a human body is truly enormous.
If you asked instead how many elements there are in the human body, the answer would be pretty low. Most likely less than a hundred. Because that is like asking how many types of fruit there are in fhe bowl. Even if it's huge bowl with hundreds of fruit, the answer could just be: "There are three: Apples, oranges and pears".
Hopefully that has made it a bit clearer.
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An atom is made of protons, neutrons and electrons. The number of protrons determine what type of element the atom will be. For example, an atom that has one proton and one electron is Hydrogen. The number of nuetrons determines the elements isotope.
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sorry don't want to mislead anyone
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> one element consists of one atom and that's Hydrogen
This is misleading. It's quite possible to have an atom of oxygen or an atom of uranium or an atom of any other element. Equally if we have a test tube full of hydrogen there are an enormous number of hydrogen atoms in there. In fact under normal conditions they exist as hydrogen molecules where each hydrogen atom is tightly bonded to one other hydrogen atom, so they effectively come in pairs.
An element is a substance consisting of one atom.
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See if these videos help... it is probably easier to understand with pictures and diagrams...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzJPRhymoY0A simple kids video
A more adult one, but still not hard to understand. (Don't be afraid of a few difficult sounding terms he mentions at the beginning... the rest is much easier to follow.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhfeXX9mKrk
Just to add, in response to the sub-question, oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon are all elements. This means that their smallest units are an atom of oxygen, an atom of hydrogen, and an atom of carbon, respectively.
There are some materials, e.g. water, where the smallest unit is a molecule, which is comprised of atoms of different elements. In the case of water, its smallest unit is a water molecule, which is comprised of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, hence the famous symbol - H2O (the "2" should be in subscript).
Ok, let me see if I can explain it better...
One of the confusing things is that a word like "oxygen" is like a word like "water", we don't normally think of "one water" or "twenty waters", the way we think of "one apple" or "twenty apples". We normally talk of water or oxygen as if it wasn't made up separate particles of water, the way a bunch a bunch of bananas is made of separate bananas, as it was a continuous thing. But water or oxygen or anything elseactually is made up of separate very small parts.
If you have some oxygen is is actually made up of lots and lots of atoms of oxygen.
So in my analogy...
One atom = one single fruit (without saying necessarily what kind of fruit)
One element = a type of fruit
Fruits includes apples, oranges, pears, bananas etc.
Elements include oxygen, hydrogen, copper etc.
There is such a thing as the smallest possible amount of an element that it is still that element, just as there is a smallest possible number of apples to have. You can have only one apple. If you have less than that it isn't an apple any more, it's a piece of an apple.
So when we say "an atom of X", it is like having just one of X. Like having just one apple. An atom of gold is the tiniest possible amount of gold that is still gold.
Gold is an an element. An atom of gold is a certain quantity of that element - the very smallest possible quantity, just one.
I am confused about, "a fruit of apples". Is it, atom... element... molecule?
> Thank you for your help and further explanation.
I just hope I was able to make it clear. It's one of those things that is fairly straightforward and yet hard to make sense of if you don't know a bunch of other related concepts.