Chemical element Chemical element A chemical element is a species of atoms having the same number of protons in their atomic nuclei (that is, the same atomic number, or "Z"). For example, the atomic number of oxygen is 8, so the element oxygen consists of all atoms which have exactly 8 protons. 118 elements have been identified, of which the first 94 occur naturally on Earth with the remaining 24 being synthetic elements. There are 80 elements that have at least one stable isotope and 38 that have exclusively radionuclides, which decay over time into other elements. Iron is the most abundant
Avoided crossing one set of parameters. If both of the atoms of a diatomic molecule is same, the symmetry suggests that different configurations keeping their mutual distance fixed will result into same electronic states. So it is the relative distance formula_73 which acts as a parameter for the two equations promising level crossing. Hence due to the avoided crossing theorem in general we can not have level crossings between two electronic states of same symmetry. But in polyatomic molecules the number of independent mutual distances of nuclei are more. For a N-atomic molecule the number of independent mutual separation is formula_74 (for