Everything we can see and touch, and quite a lot that we can’t as well, is made of tiny particles called atoms. Some substances, like particles of this iron, contain only one kind of atom. Iron is an ...

Scientists have found the first case of an ionic crystal consisting of just one chemical element -- boron. This is the densest and hardest known phase of this element. The new phase turned out to be a ...

You may have noticed that the rock formations are very different colors. The rock formations on the left are from Red Rock State Park in Texas, and on the right is El Capitan Mountain in Yosemite ...

A few years ago, Saurabh Chitnis, a synthetic chemist at Dalhousie University, did some math that spurred a radical decision. He calculated what it was costing him to send lab-made compounds away for ...

All matter, and hence all life, is ultimately linked to the elements that constitute the periodic table. While scientists may disagree about its structure, there is no escaping the fundamental ...