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Elements

  • Science
  • Grades 4-5
  • 76 words
  • Also written for younger readers

Element can mean:

  • The four basic or natural elements in mysticism, alchemy, mythology and fantasy fiction - Fire, Water, Air and Earth
  • The elements or weather
  • One part of something bigger or one of many in a group
  • A thing that a set holds
  • Chemical element, a substance that can not be divided into smaller chemical parts
  • A book by Euclid called the Elements. In it, Euclid talks about geometry.

Written for younger readers

Elements, in simpler words

This version comes from Wikijunior, a set of books written for children aged 8 to 11. It is shorter and uses plainer language than the article above.

From Wikijunior: The Elements

This page has a list of all of the elements. You might also want to check out the Periodic Table page for more info.

There’s a good chance you’ve heard of these.

  • Gold

  • Iron

  • Silver

  • Copper

  • Aluminum

  • Titanium

  • Nickel

  • Platinum

  • Tin

  • Lead

  • Mercury

  • Lithium

  • Sodium

  • Potassium

  • Calcium

  • Cobalt

  • Zinc

  • Uranium

  • Oxygen

  • Carbon

  • Nitrogen

  • Arsenic

  • Helium

  • Neon

  • Argon

  • Chlorine

  • Iodine

  • Phosphorus

  • Sulfur

These are silver-colored, soft, low-density metals that are highly chemically reactive. They are never found in pure form in nature, tarnish easily, and have low melting points and densities. They react readily with the halogens and with water.

  • Lithium
  • Sodium
  • Potassium
  • Rubidium
  • Cesium
  • Francium

These are silver colored, soft, low-density metals that react with the halogens (but not as readily as the alkali metals do), and with water (except Beryllium).

  • Beryllium
  • Magnesium
  • Calcium
  • Strontium
  • Barium
  • Radium

The more modern name for these is “inner transition metals”. They are highly chemically reactive metals. They catch fire in air very easily, and react with water (which liberates hydrogen from the water). They have higher melting and boiling points than the alkaline earth metals. On the periodic table, these elements are usually kept separate and put right at the bottom, in two rows. This is because the periodic table world be too long, and it wouldn’t be able to fit on a piece of paper, if they were put into their proper places.

  • Lanthanum  (This is also considered a transition metal.)

  • Cerium

  • Praseodymium

  • Neodymium

  • Promethium

  • Samarium

  • Europium

  • Gadolinium

  • Terbium

  • Dysprosium

  • Holmium

  • Erbium

  • Thulium

  • Ytterbium

  • Lutetium

  • Actinium  (This is also considered a transition metal.)

  • Thorium

  • Protactinium

  • Uranium

  • Neptunium

  • Plutonium

  • Americium

  • Curium

  • Berkelium

  • Californium

  • Einsteinium

  • Fermium

  • Medelevium

  • Nobelium

  • Lawrencium

These are the metals in the middle of the periodic table. Some people exclude zinc, cadmium, and mercury from being transition metals (those are the three in the rightmost column of this part of the table), because the rest of the transition metals have more chemical properties in common with each other than they do with those three. Still, the transition metals have less in common than most other groups of elements in the table do.

  • Scandium

  • Titanium

  • Vanadium

  • Chromium

  • Manganese

  • Iron

  • Cobalt

  • Nickel

  • Copper

  • Zinc  (Some people don’t count this as a transition metal.)

  • Yttrium

  • Zirconium

  • Niobium

  • Molybdenum

  • Technetium

  • Ruthenium

  • Rhodium

  • Palladium

  • Silver

  • Cadmium  (Some people don’t count this as a transition metal.)

  • Lanthanum  (This is also considered a rare earth metal.)

  • Hafnium

  • Tantalum

  • Tungsten

  • Rhenium

  • Osmium

  • Iridium

  • Platinum

  • Gold

  • Mercury  (Some people don’t count this as a transition metal.)

  • Actinium  (This is also considered a rare earth metal.)

  • Rutherfordium

  • Dubnium

  • Seaborgium

  • Bohrium

  • Hassium

  • Copernicium

  • Aluminum

  • Gallium

  • Indium

  • Tin

  • Thallium

  • Lead

  • Bismuth

These have properties of both metals and non-metals.

  • Boron
  • Silicon
  • Germanium
  • Arsenic
  • Antimony
  • Tellurium
  • Polonium

At ordinary temperatures and pressures, these are all odorless, colorless gases that are relatively difficult to involve in chemical reactions.

  • Helium
  • Neon
  • Argon
  • Krypton
  • Xenon
  • Radon

The halogens are highly chemically reactive, so that in sufficient quantities they can be harmful or lethal to living things. Several of them are used as disinfectants.

  • Fluorine

  • Chlorine

  • Bromine

  • Iodine

  • Astatine

  • Hydrogen

  • Carbon

  • Nitrogen

  • Oxygen

  • Phosphorus

  • Sulfur

  • Selenium

Some elements were discovered recently, or are too radioactive for scientists to know which type of element they are. Because of this, their place in the periodic table is only temporary and might change if scientists learn more about them.

  • Darmstadtium
  • Roentgenium
  • Copernicium
  • Nihonium
  • Flerovium
  • Moscovium
  • Livermorium
  • Tenessine
  • Oganesson

Where this page comes from

The article above is adapted from “Elements” on Simple English Wikipedia, by its contributors. We removed reference markers, navigation boxes and tables, expanded measurement templates into readable numbers, and kept the prose otherwise intact. The simpler version is adapted from Wikijunior on Wikibooks.

Both sources are published under CC BY-SA 4.0, so this page is published under the same licence. You may share and adapt it, including commercially, as long as you credit the original and keep the same licence.

Worksheets, answer keys and printable layouts elsewhere on K5Print are our own work and are not covered by this licence.