how are elements made?
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Atoms are made of 3 particles;
Electrons(low mass, negatively charged)
Neutrons(high mass, no charge)
Protons(high mass, positively charged).
We sort atoms by how many protons there is in the core. 1 proton means hydrogen, 2 means helium etc.
There’s some neutrons in there, but they don’t matter too much.
For each proton there will is an electron, and electrons are responsible for all the chemical reactions.
How are elements made? By stars. When the universe was created it was only hydrogen, helium and a tiny bit of lithium. Suns undergo a process called fusion, where atoms are fused together and create bigger ones. The sun gets a good portion of its energy from this process.
Some atoms are more likely to come from fusion. Helium, carbon, oxygen and iron are some of the big ones. Once we get up to iron something different happens. Iron is as far as you can go while still getting energy out of the fusion process. So when iron builds up in the core of a star it dies. Often that results in a supernova which is basically a massive explosion. Under a supernova there’s such much energy that iron is fused into the heavier elements like uranium.
Other than that, some atoms are not stable. This is called radioactivity. For instance sometimes atoms are hit by high energy particles and they change form. Sometimes this happens just automatically. This creates new atoms some with different amount of protons and thus different elements.
Lastly we have created a few elements in the lab. Basically by accelerating atoms to massive energies and having them hit each other.
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