Atoms, Molecules, Mixtures, Elements

Science for me, is the most challenging subject for me. But I find it an interesting subject.

Just recently, we have been studying about Atoms, Molecules, and Mixtures. In Science, the definitions of these words can be very different to what you find in a dictionary.

Atoms can also be represented as particles. So what is the use of 'atoms'/ 'particles'. Well, everything around you is made of atoms, including the air, your laptop, your house, your table. Its just that each atoms is in different forms:
Tables, computers, TV screens, objects that are hard, and don't move are all categorized as solids.

Things such as water, rain, tears etc, are all categorized as liquids, and they are obviously liquid.

And the last category is gas. Gas includes things such as spraying mosquito repellant, LPG, air etc.

Moving on  . . . Elements, so what are elements? Elements are is a combination of more than 1 atom of the same kind added together. For example, a sulphur atom + another sulphur atom --> S8 (We use Chemical equations to represent the formula) and when there is more than 1 formula it is called formulae. Also a observation that you may, or may not have picked up is that Science is different from Mathematics, in Scientific equations, we don't use the = sign, instead we use -->. And in this equation Sulphur + sulphur --> S8. The words highlighted in red represent the reactants of this equation (meaning what elements/ atoms are being combined together). And the word highlighted in blue is the product (meaning what is produced or what is the outcome). In all types of equations, the reactants are on the left, and the products are on the right hand side.

A thing you may want to keep in mind. Don't think that there is only 1 type of atom (sulphur), in fact, there are N numbers of different atoms, but it is just that scientists today have only found 114 of them. How I found out how many different types of atoms there are is simply by searching Periodic Table in Google. And you will found out how many there are. Each atom has its own symbol, and its own atomic numeral. It is arranged by amount of mass from lightest - heaviest.

Now that you know there are 114 atoms that we know, you can now play around with some of the atoms. For example, there can be Oxygen (O) + Hydrogen (H) which is represented as H+O --> H20 which is known as the water molecule. And when 2 different atoms are combined together they form a compound. (A compound is when 2 different atoms are mixed together). But there are some atoms when you combine them together have a special name. E.g. Sodium (Na) + Chlorine (Cl) Na + Cl --> NaCl, which is Sodium Chloride. (It does not equal to Sodium Chlorine) it has to be represented as Sodium Chloride or, NaCl.
Another example is Bromine or Iodine.
E.g. Magnesium (Mg) + Bromine (Br) Mg + Br --> MgBr which is Magnesium Bromide
Another example is B + I --> BI Boron Iodide.

But be aware, that only 3 of the elements when formed to be a compound can be named -dide. And those are Chlorine, Bromine and Iodine.

Getting into more detail, there are also some other things called mixtures, which are more than 2 different substances combined together which form a product.