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A chemical element, often simply called an element, is a type of atom which has a specific number of protons in its atomic nucleus (i.e., a specific atomic number, or Z). [ 1 ] The definitive visualisation of all 118 elements is the periodic table of the elements , whose history along the principles of the periodic law was one of the founding ...
The abundance of the chemical elements is a measure of the occurrences of the chemical elements relative to all other elements in a given environment. Abundance is measured in one of three ways: by mass fraction (in commercial contexts often called weight fraction), by mole fraction (fraction of atoms by numerical count, or sometimes fraction of molecules in gases), or by volume fraction.
Boron does not appear on Earth in elemental form. Extremely small traces of elemental boron were detected in Lunar regolith. [73] [74] Although boron is a relatively rare element in the Earth's crust, representing only 0.001% of the crust mass, it can be highly concentrated by the action of water, in which many borates are soluble.
The trends in group 5 follow those of the other early d-block groups and reflect the addition of a filled f-shell into the core in passing from the fifth to the sixth period. All the stable members of the group are silvery-blue refractory metals, though impurities of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen make them brittle. [28]
Sulfur is the fifth most common element by mass in the Earth. Elemental sulfur can be found near hot springs and volcanic regions in many parts of the world, especially along the Pacific Ring of Fire; such volcanic deposits are mined in Indonesia, Chile, and Japan.
World Book Encyclopedia, Exploring Earth. HyperPhysics, Georgia State University, Abundance of Elements in Earth's Crust. Eric Scerri, The Periodic Table, Its Story and Its Significance, Oxford University Press, 2007 "EarthRef.org Digital Archive (ERDA) -- Major Element Composition of the Core vs the Bulk Earth". earthref.org
With an abundance in the Earth's crust comparable to that of platinum (about 1 μg/kg), tellurium is one of the rarest stable solid elements. [22] In comparison, even thulium – the rarest of the stable lanthanides – has crystal abundances of 500 μg/kg (see Abundance of the chemical elements ).
The Russell-Saunders term symbol of the ground state in all elements in the group is 4 S 3 ⁄ 2. The most important elements of this group to life on Earth are nitrogen (N), which in its diatomic form is the principal component of air, and phosphorus (P), which, like nitrogen, is essential to all known forms of life.