Consider the letters in the word chemistry. Use them to make as many word "compounds" as is possible with 9 elements. How is an element different from a compound?

1 Answer
Sep 29, 2016

Interesting question...

The various permutations of valid elements from the word "chemistry" are:

  • #C#
  • #Ce#
  • #Cm#
  • #Cs#
  • #Cr#
  • #H#
  • #He#
  • #Es#
  • #Er#
  • #I#
  • #Ir#
  • #S#
  • #Sc#
  • #Se#
  • #Sm#
  • #Si#
  • #Sr#
  • #Tc#
  • #Th#
  • #Te#
  • #Tm#
  • #Ti#
  • #Rh#
  • #Re#
  • #Y#

So you have any #9# of these at your disposal when making compounds. Let us choose the easiest elements to use: #C#, #Cs#, #H#, #I#, #S#, #Se#, #Si#, #Sr#, #Te#. None of those are transition metals.

These are the compounds I can think of that exist:

  • #CH_4#
  • #HI#
  • #CsI#
  • #H_2S#
  • #H_2Se#
  • #SiH_4#
  • #SrI_2#
  • #TeI#

There are probably more but anyways, you can clearly see that each of these have two different elements. That's the definition of a compound.