States of matter 1. If you take a piece of chalk and go on cutting it into smaller and smaller bits, you will come to a stage where you will need a microscope to see the smaller dimensions. As you go further into smaller dimensions, you will need very powerful microscopes to see the small bits. There you will see that the chalk piece is made up of molecules. Molecules can be spliced even smaller and can be split into some basic units called atoms.
Atoms are the basic building blocks of matter.
There are many types of atoms in the Universe. Molecules are made up of a combination of more than one atom. Pure substances like gold are solely made up of gold atoms. Another word describing pure substances is Element . There are more than 120 elements, of which only about 92 elements are found naturally on the earth.