Elements are the items on the periodic table; gold, carbon, oxygen, things like that.
An atom is the smallest possible unit of that element. If you put a bunch of identical atoms together, you still have that element.
Another way of putting it; if I had a bar of gold, and I kept splitting it into smaller and smaller bits, eventually I would have gold nuggets, then gold slivers, and finally gold atoms.
An atom is the smallest possible unit of that element. If you put a bunch of identical atoms together, you still have that element.
Another way of putting it; if I had a bar of gold, and I kept splitting it into smaller and smaller bits, eventually I would have gold nuggets, then gold slivers, and finally gold atoms.