Every answer here is either wrong or very incomplete with the exception of Dr. Fisher’s answer.

There is much more to the formation of the elements other than just saying a “super-novae” or an exploding sun or star.

There are actually 19 different processes involved with forming the elements and those 19 are just the ones that we are aware of…there may be more.

Some of the 19 processes I refer to are everything from Hydrogen and Helium fusion to the triple-alpha process, neutron capture, the s-process, proton capture, and photodisintegration. Those are just a few ways matter is created. While it IS true that many of our elements are created in the immense heat and pressure of exploding/collapsing massive stars (supernovae), there are also many other ways in which matter is created.

Below is a currently complete chart that took Ph.D. students and Professors years to work out. It displays how we believe most of the elements are created.

As you can see, the first two elements were formed during the big bang and part of the Li in the universe was created then too.

Other methods of element making also include cosmic ray fission, exploding white dwarfs, merging neutron stars and dying low mass stars.

So next time you look down on your hand and look at your gold ring or possibly a diamond or platinum band or even think about the atoms that make up all of us….please give some credit to these last five events for without them, life probably wouldn't be.

Footnote: Just in case your saying ‘well, anything heavier than lead isn't that important anyway”, then I ask you to think of just Uranium and how it decays and provides the inner heat to Planet Earth and fuels volcanic activity which kept us from being a permanent “snowball” revolving around its sun.

I like them so much I think we should have a Merging Neutron Star Day or maybe a Cosmic Ray Fission Day. As good of a reason for a holiday that I can think of :)

Chemical elements are the fundamental substances that make up all matter in the universe.

Each element is characterized by a unique number of protons in its atomic nucleus, known as its atomic number. This atomic number determines the element's identity and properties.

Chemical elements cannot be broken down into simpler substances through chemical reactions. They are the building blocks of all matter and can combine in various ways to form compounds. Elements are typically organized in the periodic table, which arranges them based on their atomic number and similar chemical properties.

There are currently 118 known elements, some common examples of chemical elements include hydrogen, hydrogen gas. oxygen, oxygen gas, carbon, iron, gold, and uranium. The study of elements and their behavior forms the foundation of chemistry and provides insights into the properties and interactions of matter.

Elements “are” NOT formed. Rather, they “were” formed.

Well, an element is distinguished from another at the ground level by physical/chemical properties. But it all boils down to a simple difference- one that is really serious- the number of protons (and neutrons, if you distinguish between isotopes too).

Theories can go on and on about the creation of the universe, but the most prevalent one seems to be the Big Bang. And you can read on and on about it, for most of the part.

What really matters is that initially there were high energy particles, and these cooled down, combining into various elements over a span of millions of years (this all happened before the creation of the solar system, perhaps). Radiations, high-speed collisions and things of that kind would have contributed to this boring process.

Now, let me clarify this: if someone says that table salt is made of Sodium and Chlorine, that definitely does not mean that someone actually created Sodium atoms from protons, neutrons, and electrons.

Most of the elements in our daily lives probably have been around for billions of years and they’ve been converted from one form to another over this extra large span.

But elements can be artificially converted from one to another by bombardment with subatomic particles, but that does not help produce everyday goods: this method may spend billions of Joules of energy and cost about the same amount of dollars, ultimately producing perhaps just about a mole of that element.

Hope you are clear!

Assuming linguistic limitations, I guess you mean…
“How do Elements form”…. (Could fill the Internet with this).
We 1st need to accept Einsteins theory, when he said that “Energy can not be created or destroyed, but only transformed from one object to another, or from one form to another…”, and that I believe. As such, (although beyond the scope of discussion here), MATTER is but a ‘form’ of ENERGY……. (Lots of energy).
The simplest atom is Hydrogen, consisting of 1 Proton in it’s nucleus, and 1 Electron in ‘orbit’. More massive amounts of energy, (nuclear & otherwise) can be converted into the ‘next’ atom, Helium. This has 2 Protons & 2 Neutrons in it’s nucleus, and 2 Electrons in ‘orbit’…. etc etc….. In this way, the ‘matter’ (elements) in our ‘universe’ have come to be, in their massively varying degrees of production requirements/happenstance …….
OUR star, (our Sun), is still WAY to young to have ever produced such ‘Atoms’ that follow that make up our ‘Earth’, and as such pretty much all the ‘Atoms’ that exist here, is what has been LONG ago captured in orbit from the original swirling masses that gravitationally conglomerated from LONG before exploding Super-Novas in our Galaxy….. What does that mean???….. Well virtually every ‘atom’ (and now molecule) that makes up your entire human ‘body’, came from NOW long gone Stars !!!!!

We are all born from the death of a star.

When stars are healthy, they have plenty of hydrogen to fuse into HELIUM and that extracts the most energy for the star to do more fusion and spray the rest out as heat and sunlight.

The stars began to lose energy when they must use more energy to form larger elements due to the lack of hydrogen. This starts their death spiral because they are using more energy to make the elements that we are made of (C,N,O,P) and they have less to perpetuate the fusion furnace. They get bloated, the furnace ends, they collapse, and the multi valence elements that make us are spewed out in the explosion caused from the collapse.

… that is where our story begins … as star guts.

Hydrogen formed from fundamental particles during the early stages of the Big Bang. The hydrogen was not uniformly distributed in the early universe and gravity did what gravity does and pulled together hydrogen into potential stars. I say “potential” because the mass must be great enough to have the compressive pressure great enough to produce the kinds of temperatures great enough to result in temperatures in the tens of millions of degrees Kelvin. If this is accomplished, the furnace of nuclear fusion is ignited. In nuclear fusion, smaller atomic nuclei are fused together to form a larger nucleus. For example, hydrogens fuse to form a helium nucleus. This is the first step and is why the elements in the universe today are 99% hydrogen and helium. Heavier elements are formed by continued nuclear fusion as the star “ages”. When the largest stars “die” they go through a spectacular process known as a “supernova” and blow off tremendous amounts of energy and the new elements it has formed into space where gravity can do its work again and accrete material into new celestial objects such as second generation stars, planets and so forth. Also, each time fusion happens, a photon of light is released so the answer to where do elements form is the same answer as “Why do the stars shine?”. Humans have learned to make elements by nuclear fusion but controlling this process is still a challenge. Also, the elements produced synthetically are extremely radioactive and have very short half-lives. Radioactive elements, whether synthetic or naturally made, eventually decay into more stable elements by spontaneous fission due to the instability of their nuclei.

In summary, the vast majority of elements are formed by nuclear fusion in the cores of stars. A few of these elements are unstable (think radioactive) and decay into more stable “daughter” elements. Humans in the twentieth century learned to do both of these processes.

Sulfur - Wikipedia

Though sometimes found in pure, native form, sulfur on Earth usually occurs as sulfide and sulfate minerals. Being abundant in native form, sulfur was known in ancient times, being mentioned for its uses in ancient India, ancient Greece, China, and Egypt. In the Bible, sulfur is called brimstone, which means burning stone". Today, almost all elemental sulfur is produced as a byproduct of removing sulfur-containing contaminants from natural gas and petroleum.

Elemental sulfur means sulfur in the zero oxidation state or in other words not oxidized.

Elements are described as elemental if the form that they are referred to exists as the pure, uncombined element. For example, elemental oxygen exists as O2. It can, however, also have an extremely short life of a few thousandths of a second as the atomic oxygen (O) radical which is implicated in ageing of human cell tissue.

Ozone (O3) is not generally referred to as elemental oxygen, but as an allotrope of oxygen, O2. However, ozone may be referred to as an elemental molecule by virtue of it being composed solely of O atoms.

Any element that exists naturally in the uncombined state as the free element (eg gold) may be referred to as elemental.

Math majors count, “1, 2, 3, 4, 5.”

Chemistry majors count, “Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Beryllium, Boron.” :-)

The name of an element corresponds to the number of protons in its nucleus.

Once given a name, an element can also have a variable number of neutrons accompanying the protons in its nucleus.

The number of neutrons tells you what isotope of the element you have, but adding or subtracting neutrons in the nucleus does not change the element’s name (because the name of an element depends only on its count of protons in the nucleus.)

Oh, and for non-ionized atoms, the number of electrons around the nucleus (each with one negative charge) always equals the number of protons in the nucleus (each with one positive charge) for a net charge of zero for the atom.

We know of 90 elements that occur naturally out of the 116 known elements, the rest of them are “man-made”.

The formation of the lightest elements we know of - hydrogen, helium, lithium and beryllium, takes place back at the formation of the universe itself, which is often called “The Big Bang”. The rest of the naturally occuring elements were created as a result of nuclear reactions in the stars that had been formed during the formation of the universe, and also as a result tremendous planetary explosions referred as ‘supernovae’. This phenomenon keeps regularly occurring in stars nowadays too, and leads to the formation of pure elements. During a supernova, the star releases a great amount of energy and neutrons, which allows even heavier ellements to be produced. In the supernova explosion, all of these elements are washed away into space. The occurance of “red giants” in space as a result of dying stars is also known as a source of pure elements - it manufactures carbon atoms by fusing helium atoms, mainly.

The “man made” elements are formed by the use of particle accelerators. A famous example of such element is seaborgium, that was created by bombarding atoms of the element curium with atoms of neon.

atoms are trying to reach the most stable (lowest-energy) state that they can. Many atoms become stable when their valence shell is filled with electrons or when they satisfy the octet rule (by having eight valence electrons

The term inert generally means somethings motionless or in a state of doing little or nothing.

In chemistry inert means a substance that’s chemically inactive.

There are inert gases commonly known as halogens. They include helium,argon and neon.

Atoms are considered to be unstable if they do not have a filled outer orbital. Orbitals are where electrons reside and the maximum number for the outer most orbital is 8.

Most atoms do not have 8 electrons in this outer orbital so they react with other atoms to form bonds to fill their outer electron orbital. For example oxygen has 6 electrons on its outer most orbital it needs two more to be stable. One oxygen atom bonds with another oxygen atom to form oxygen molecule that is relatively stable.

Same thing happens with water.

The atomic structure of the noble gases is different from the structure of most atoms because they have a filled outer orbital. Because of this, they are stable and do not 'need' to interact with other atoms.

For example, helium, is a very small atom and has only 2 electrons in its outermost electron orbital (which is its only orbital). It is stable with this filled outer orbital. This is because the filling of electrons in orbitals starts with two then eight.

The above information, with the conclusion that inert gases don’t react with other elements is correct but, in 1962, chemist Neil Bartlett performed experiments with Xenon and found out that it could form a compound with fluorine and platinum.

As a result of his research, currently we know that under specific conditions some of the atoms of a few inert gases do react and form bonds with other atoms.

The full title for these materials are chemical elements usually abbreviated to chemicals. Chemical compounds are generally lumped into the term chemicals as well.

Chemical or chemicals are general words. for materials such as water molecules H2O or elements like Lead Pb
The H2 is a molecule it is molecular hydrogen a diatomic molecule.
Chemistry concerns itself with the interactions between atoms which are actually the interactions between the outer few electron orbitals.
There is a subset of the science of chemistry called physical chemistry that is in effect the interface between the physics of the atom (protons, neutrons ) and the chemical behaviour of a given atom.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_chemistry

Physical chemistry essentially explains why chemistry occurs as a consequence of the physics of the atom.

Atomic Number: 8

Atomic Weight: 15.9994

Melting Point: 54.36 K (-218.79°C or -361.82°F)

Boiling Point: 90.20 K (-182.95°C or -297.31°F)

Density: 0.001429 grams per cubic centimeter

Phase at Room Temperature: Gas

Element Classification: Non-metal

Period Number: 2 Group Number: 16 Group Name: Chalcogen

What's in a name? From the greek words oxys and genes, which together mean "acid forming."

Say what? Oxygen is pronounced as OK-si-jen.

History and Uses:

Oxygen had been produced by several chemists prior to its discovery in 1774, but they failed to recognize it as a distinct element. Joseph Priestley and Carl Wilhelm Scheele both independently discovered oxygen, but Priestly is usually given credit for the discovery. They were both able to produce oxygen by heating mercuric oxide (HgO). Priestley called the gas produced in his experiments 'dephlogisticated air' and Scheele called his 'fire air'. The name oxygen was created by Antoine Lavoisier who incorrectly believed that oxygen was necessary to form all acids.

Oxygen is the third most abundant element in the universe and makes up nearly 21% of the earth's atmosphere. Oxygen accounts for nearly half of the mass of the earth's crust, two thirds of the mass of the human body and nine tenths of the mass of water. Large amounts of oxygen can be extracted from liquefied air through a process known as fractional distillation. Oxygen can also be produced through the electrolysis of water or by heating potassium chlorate (KClO3).

Oxygen is a highly reactive element and is capable of combining with most other elements. It is required by most living organisms and for most forms of combustion. Impurities in molten pig iron are burned away with streams of high pressure oxygen to produce steel. Oxygen can also be combined with acetylene (C2H2) to produce an extremely hot flame used for welding. Liquid oxygen, when combined with liquid hydrogen, makes an excellent rocket fuel. Ozone (O3) forms a thin, protective layer around the earth that shields the surface from the sun's ultraviolet radiation. Oxygen is also a component of hundreds of thousands of organic compounds.

Estimated Crustal Abundance: 4.61×10*5 milligrams per kilogram

Estimated Oceanic Abundance: 8.57×10*5 milligrams per liter

Number of Stable Isotopes: 3

Ionization Energy: 13.618 eV

Oxidation States: -2