Matter: All that Stuff - Elements, Atoms, Compounds

Summary
An introduction to the organization of matter including the terminology element, atom, and compound.

Objectives
• Students will relate the term matter to everyday objects.

• Students will define element and give examples.

• Students will compare and contrast elements and atoms.

• Students will describe the three subatomic particles.

• Students will define and give examples of compounds.

Suggested Grades
4th Grade
5th Grade
6th Grade

Excerpt
Just look around you and you will see ?stuff? ? tables, pencils, food, books, animals, etc. Everything you see around you is made of matter. There are more different kinds of things out there than we could ever list, but they are all built of the same chemical building blocks. Even very complicated types of matter like volcanoes or human bodies are made of combinations of elements.

Elements are substances that cannot be separated into simpler substances by a chemical change. You may have seen a periodic table, which shows in chart format over 100 elements that are known. For example, helium is an element. Helium has the symbol He and is used to fill balloons.

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