question: How are synthetic elements considered elements?
comment: An element is defined by being a single atom with a specific number of Protons. The more protons, the heavier the element. We can create heavier elements in the lab by increasing the proton count of certain atoms. Water isn't an element, it's a molecule. A molecule is a combination of different elements bonded together.
passages: Naming of chemical elements
  
  Chemical elements may be named from various sources: sometimes based on the person who discovered it, or the place it was discovered. Some have Latin or Greek roots deriving from something related to the element, for example some use to which it may have been put.
  
  Section::::Known elements.
   A synthetic element is one of 24 chemical elements that do not occur naturally on Earth: they have been created by human manipulation of fundamental particles in a nuclear reactor or particle accelerator, or detonation of an atomic bomb; and thus are called "synthetic", "artificial", or "man-made". The synthetic elements are those with atomic numbers 95–118, as shown in purple on the accompanying periodic table: these 24 elements were created between 1944 and 2010. The mechanism for the creation of a synthetic element is to force additional protons onto the nucleus of an element with an atomic number lower than ninety-five. All synthetic elements are unstable, but they decay at at a widely varying rate: their half-lives range from 15.6 million years to a few hundred microseconds. 
   Section::::Description.:Properties.:Occurrence and origin on Earth.
  
  Chemical elements may also be categorized by their origin on Earth, with the first 94 considered naturally occurring, while those with atomic numbers beyond 94 have only been produced artificially as the synthetic products of man-made nuclear reactions.
   Section::::Naming controversies.
   Plutonium, atomic number 94, first synthesized in 1940, is extremely well-known due to its use in atomic bombs and nuclear reactors. No elements with an atomic number greater than 99 have any uses outside of scientific research, since they have extremely short half-lives, and thus have never been produced in large quantities.
  
  Seven other elements that were created artificially - and thus initially considered to be synthetic - were later discovered to exist in nature in trace quantities. The first, technetium, was created in 1937.
  
  Section::::Properties.
   Classical elements typically refer to the concepts in ancient Greece of earth, water, air, fire, and (later) aether, which were proposed to explain the nature and complexity of all matter in terms of simpler substances. Ancient cultures in Persia, Greece, Babylonia, Japan, Tibet, and India had similar lists , sometimes referring in local languages to "air" as "wind" and the fifth element as "void". The Chinese Wu Xing system lists Wood (木 "mù"), Fire (火 "huǒ"), Earth (土 "tǔ"), Metal (金 "jīn"), and Water (水 "shuǐ"), though these are described more as energies or transitions rather than as types of material.
   Section::::Alternative forms of an element, names indicating molecular structure, and names of compounds.
   From Boyle until the early 20th century, an element was defined as a pure substance that could not be decomposed into any simpler substance. Put another way, a chemical element cannot be transformed into other chemical elements by chemical processes. Elements during this time were generally distinguished by their atomic weights, a property measurable with fair accuracy by available analytical techniques.
  
  Section::::History.:Evolving definitions.:Atomic definitions.
   During the height of the Cold War, teams from the Soviet Union and the United States independently discovered rutherfordium and dubnium. The naming and credit for discovery of these elements remained unresolved for many years, but eventually shared credit was recognized by IUPAC/IUPAP in 1992. In 1997, IUPAC decided to give dubnium its current name honoring the city of Dubna where the Russian team made their discoveries since American-chosen names had already been used for many existing synthetic elements, while the name "rutherfordium" (chosen by the American team) was accepted for element 104.
  
  Section::::History.:The last twelve.
   Meanwhile, the American team had discovered seaborgium, and the next six elements had been discovered by a German team: bohrium, hassium, meitnerium, darmstadtium, roentgenium, and copernicium. Element 113, nihonium, was discovered by a Japanese team; the last five known elements, flerovium, moscovium, livermorium, tennessine, and oganesson, were discovered by Russian–American collaborations and complete the seventh row of the periodic table.
  
  Section::::List of synthetic elements.
  
  The following elements do not occur naturally on Earth. All are transuranium elements and have atomic numbers of 95 and higher.
  
  Section::::Other elements usually produced through synthesis.
   BULLET::::- The three incidentally occurring natural elements (neptunium, promethium, and technetium), which were all first produced synthetically but later discovered in trace amounts in certain geological samples
  
  BULLET::::- Three scarce decay products of uranium or thorium, (astatine, francium, and protactinium), and
  
  BULLET::::- Various synthetic transuranic elements, beginning with americium and curium
  
  Section::::History.:Recently discovered elements.
   Section::::Nomenclature and symbols.:Element names.
   The concept of an "element" as an undivisible substance has developed through three major historical phases: Classical definitions (such as those of the ancient Greeks), chemical definitions, and atomic definitions.
  
  Section::::History.:Evolving definitions.:Classical definitions.
  
  Ancient philosophy posited a set of classical elements to explain observed patterns in nature. These "elements" originally referred to "earth", "water", "air" and "fire" rather than the chemical elements of modern science.
   List of chemical element name etymologies
  
  This article lists the etymology of chemical elements of the periodic table.
  
  Section::::History.
  
  Throughout the history of chemistry, several chemical elements have been discovered. In the nineteenth century, Dmitri Mendeleev formulated the periodic table, a table of elements which describes their structure. Because elements have been discovered at various times and places, from antiquity through the present day, their names have derived from several languages and cultures. 
  
  Section::::See also.
  
  BULLET::::- List of chemical elements naming controversies
  
  BULLET::::- Naming of elements
  
  BULLET::::- History of elements
  
  BULLET::::- Sorting of elements
  
  Section::::Further reading.
   Traditional names of elements are trivial, some originating in alchemy. IUPAC has accepted these names, but has also defined systematic names of elements that have not yet been prepared. It has adopted a procedure by which the scientists who are credited with preparing an element can propose a new name. Once the IUPAC has accepted such a (trivial) name, it replaces the systematic name.
  
  Section::::Elements.:Origins.
   The naming of various substances now known as elements precedes the atomic theory of matter, as names were given locally by various cultures to various minerals, metals, compounds, alloys, mixtures, and other materials, although at the time it was not known which chemicals were elements and which compounds. As they were identified as elements, the existing names for anciently-known elements (e.g., gold, mercury, iron) were kept in most countries. National differences emerged over the names of elements either for convenience, linguistic niceties, or nationalism. For a few illustrative examples: German speakers use "Wasserstoff" (water substance) for "hydrogen", "Sauerstoff" (acid substance) for "oxygen" and "Stickstoff" (smothering substance) for "nitrogen", while English and some romance languages use "sodium" for "natrium" and "potassium" for "kalium", and the French, Italians, Greeks, Portuguese and Poles prefer "azote/azot/azoto" (from roots meaning "no life") for "nitrogen".
   The term "element" is used for atoms with a given number of protons (regardless of whether or not they are ionized or chemically bonded, e.g. hydrogen in water) as well as for a pure chemical substance consisting of a single element (e.g. hydrogen gas). For the second meaning, the terms "elementary substance" and "simple substance" have been suggested, but they have not gained much acceptance in English chemical literature, whereas in some other languages their equivalent is widely used (e.g. French ', Russian '). A single element can form multiple substances differing in their structure; they are called allotropes of the element.
   Any elements with atomic number 94-118 present at the formation of the earth about 4.6 billion years ago have decayed sufficiently rapidly into lighter elements relative to the age of Earth that any atoms of these elements that may have existed when the Earth formed have long since decayed. Atoms of synthetic elements now present on Earth are the product of atomic bombs or experiments that involve nuclear reactors or particle accelerators, via nuclear fusion or neutron absorption.
   BULLET::::- Water represented things that were liquid.
  
  BULLET::::- Fire represented things that destroy.
  
  BULLET::::- Air represented things that moved.
  
  BULLET::::- Void or Sky/Heaven represented things not of our everyday life.
  
  Section::::Modern history.
  
  Section::::Modern history.:Chemical element.
  
  The Aristotelian tradition and medieval alchemy eventually gave rise to modern chemistry, scientific theories and new taxonomies. By the time of Antoine Lavoisier, for example, a list of elements would no longer refer to classical elements. Some modern scientists see a parallel between the classical elements and the four states of matter: solid, liquid, gas and weakly ionized plasma.
   According to IUPAC, chemical elements are not proper nouns in English; consequently, the full name of an element is not routinely capitalized in English, even if derived from a proper noun, as in californium and einsteinium. Isotope names of chemical elements are also uncapitalized if written out, "e.g.," carbon-12 or uranium-235. Chemical element "symbols" (such as Cf for californium and Es for einsteinium), are always capitalized (see below).
   At least two additional, two-letter generic chemical symbols are also in informal usage, "Ln" for any lanthanide element and "An" for any actinide element. "Rg" was formerly used for any rare gas element, but the group of rare gases has now been renamed noble gases and the symbol "Rg" has now been assigned to the element roentgenium.
  
  Section::::Nomenclature and symbols.:Chemical symbols.:Isotope symbols.
   When a pure element, comprising only one type of atom, nevertheless exists in multiple forms (allotropes) with different structure and properties, they are generally given different names; for example graphite and diamond are both forms of the element carbon. Even for elements such as nitrogen having only one stable allotrope, a name such as dinitrogen may be used to indicate its molecular structure N as well as its elemental composition. The naming of chemical compounds comprising more than one element is a complex subject, discussed at length in the article on chemical nomenclature.
   BULLET::::- Actinoids – Elements 89–103: Ac, Th, Pa, U, Np, Pu, Am, Cm, Bk, Cf, Es, Fm, Md, No, Lr.
  
  BULLET::::- Rare-earth metals – Sc, Y, plus the lanthanoids.
  
  BULLET::::- Transition elements – Elements in groups 3 to 11 or 3 to 12.
   Atomic mass for natural elements is based on weighted average abundance of natural isotopes that occur in Earth's crust and atmosphere. For "synthetic" elements, the isotope depends on the means of synthesis, so the concept of natural isotope abundance has no meaning. Therefore, for synthetic elements the total nucleon count (protons plus neutrons) of the most stable isotope, i.e. the isotope with the longest half-life—is listed in brackets as the atomic mass.
  
  Section::::History.
  
  Section::::History.:Technetium.
   For purposes of international communication and trade, the official names of the chemical elements both ancient and more recently recognized are decided by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), which has decided on a sort of international English language, drawing on traditional English names even when an element's chemical symbol is based on a Latin or other traditional word, for example adopting "gold" rather than "aurum" as the name for the 79th element (Au). IUPAC prefers the British spellings "aluminium" and "caesium" over the U.S. spellings "aluminum" and "cesium", and the U.S. "sulfur" over the British "sulphur". However, elements that are practical to sell in bulk in many countries often still have locally used national names, and countries whose national language does not use the Latin alphabet are likely to use the IUPAC element names.
  