Main-group element Main-group element In chemistry and atomic physics, the main group is the group of elements whose lightest members are represented by helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and fluorine as arranged in the periodic table of the elements. The main group includes the elements (except hydrogen, which is sometimes not included) in groups 1 and 2 (s-block), and groups 13 to 18 (p-block). The s-block elements are primarily characterised by one main oxidation state, and the p-block elements, when they have multiple oxidation states, often have common oxidation states separated by two units. Main-group elements (with some of the
Prime element if, the principal ideal generated by is a nonzero prime ideal. (Note that in an integral domain, the ideal is a prime ideal, but is an exception in the definition of 'prime element'.) Interest in prime elements comes from the Fundamental theorem of arithmetic, which asserts that each nonzero integer can be written in essentially only one way as 1 or −1 multiplied by a product of positive prime numbers. This led to the study of unique factorization domains, which generalize what was just illustrated in the integers. Being prime is relative to which ring an element is considered to