What are materials made of? What are the elements called?

What are materials made of?

4. Elements and compounds

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What are the elements called?

Picture 4.4 Bromine is a brown liquid which turns easily into a vapour.

		Scientists call substances like hydrogen and oxygen elements. They can’t be split into simpler materials. A substance like water, that is made up of two or more elements combined together, is a compound.

	Names of elements

		When each new element was discovered, the scientists involved had to give it a name. Some names describe the main properties of an element. The strong smelling element bromine is named after the Greek word for stench. Iridium is a element that forms highly coloured compounds. It was named after the Latin word for rainbow. At one stage, the fashion was to name newly discovered elements after mythical characters. So promethium is named after Prometheus who stole fire from the heavens and thorium is named after Thor, the Scandinavian god of war.

Picture 4.5 Ernest Rutherford suggested that there was a nucleus inside an atom. He now has an element named after him.

People and places

Some elements are named after places. Americium was discovered by the American G.T. Seaborg and is named after his home country. Polonium, discovered by Marie Curie, is named after Poland.

On the other hand, some places are named after elements which are found there: Argentina in South America and the Gold coast in Africa (see question 18).

Recently, elements have been named after distinguished scientists. Einsteinium is named after Albert Einstein and Mendelevium is named after Demitri Mendeleev.

	It's me, it's me!
		Unfortunately, in the last few years, some scientists have argued about who was the first to discover an element. Because of this, an international committee has been appointed to name new elements. The names are made up from Latin names for the numbers. So a new element could be called Ununenium after the number 119!