why do they consider stuff made in a lab actual "elements"?

Question

i mean, if they MADE the stuff, its not really anything u can find in nature and therefore shudn't be called an actual element of the earth, plus they only last like 2 seconds or something. its stupid

Answer 1

They consider them elements because they can't be broken down into anything simpler.

Some laboratory-made elements are very unstable, causing them to fall apart and release radiation, but they are still technically elements.

In additional, elements don't have to be from the earth, just a majority of them happen to be found in nature. Like you don't see Americium (Am) just lying around in the woods somewhere.

Answer 2

some only last two seconds. Some are created by nature then quickly destroyed by nature. The reason these are on the periodc table is because the periodic table does not have an admissions policy. If an element has ever exsisted, it goes on the table. Man made, and stability (time the element lasts) are not taken into effect. Plus it's not a moral thing. It's science and those elements being on the table simply increase what is known. There should not be admission policies.

Answer 3

I don't like the idea of these things being called "elements" directly. I call them "scientific elements" and the old Earth, Air, Fire and Water thing is what I call "Spiritual elements". But there's just a small problem with your theory. Scientists don't "make" scientific elements, they discover them, and they are called the elements because their atom structure cannot be broken down any further than what they already are.
An example is gold. Do you know any type of gold that can be broken down chemically further than it already is? There's no existing evidence for such a thing, so gold is called an element. Gold comes from the fractured particles of supernova debris in space, so I do not see how it can be man made.

Answer 4

Gold cannot be manmade. But each element is defined by a specific number of protons in the nucleus of its atom. That's what differentiates one element from another. Therefore if scientists in a laboratory succeed in creating an atomic nucleus that has a greater number of protons than any previously known element, that atom is by definition a new element, regardless of how long its life is and regardless of how it was produced.