Standard atomic weight real life substances—for example, in pharmaceuticals and scientific research. Atomic weights are specific to single sources and samples of an element, such as the atomic weight of carbon in a particular bone from a particular archeological site. Standard atomic weight generalizes such values to the "range of atomic weights" which a chemist might expect to derive from many random samples from Earth. This range is the cause of the "interval notation" in some standard atomic weight values. Out of the 118 known chemical elements, 84 are stable and have this Earth-environment based value. Typically, such a value is, for example
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