Elements and Compounds

Everything is made up of ATOMS. We imagine these to be tiny balls.

There are about 100 different types of atoms. They come in different sizes. If a substance is made of just one type of atom, like the 3 examples above, it is an element. There are therefore about 100 elements.

Here are some more elements. If you want to know them all look on your periodic table.

Gold	Helium	Mercury	Sodium	Chlorine

Elements can react with each other to form compounds. A compound is a substance that contains 2 or more elements chemically combined.

Here are some well known compounds. There are thousands.

The chemical formula tells us what elements make up the compound and how much of each it contains

A mixture will contain several substances, elements or compounds, but NOT chemically combined, just mixed together.

(If you mix red and blue smarties you do not get purple ones!)

Here are some common mixtures.