Every part of the human body is made up of elements at the most basic level. So is the case with everything else in the universe.
If we observe the construction of a building, we will see the builder placing one brick over another to raise a wall. Elements to things are like bricks to a building. They are the fundamental building blocks of matter. We know of 118 kinds of elements today.
What makes one kind of element different from another is the number of protons in its atomic nucleus. Hydrogen has only one proton in its nucleus; whereas, oxygen has 8. These numbers are known as the atomic numbers of these elements.
An element is known by its atomic number and a symbol. The symbol is often an abbreviation of the Latin name of the element. While the symbol of hydrogen is H, the symbol of iron is ‘Fe’. This is because iron is ‘ferrum’ in Latin. Of the 118 elements that we know today, not all elements occur naturally on Earth. Ninety-four of them are natural, while many others can be created artificially.
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