How are elements formed?

Elements are like different kinds of building blocks that make up everything around us.

Imagine you have a big box of colorful lego bricks, each color and shape is like an element. Some legos are simple, like the basic red brick, while others are more special, like the tiny green one that fits in the corner.

It's kind of like when you play with your legos at home. When you shake up a box of legos or press them together hard, sometimes they stick to each other and make new shapes, just like how atoms combine to form elements inside stars and planets.

In space, big stars are like giant furnaces where these legos get heated up and smashed together. When the star explodes, it sends out all these new kinds of legos, which become elements we find on Earth, like gold or oxygen.

Sometimes, when small pieces of lego join together in a special way, they create something totally new, just like how scientists make new elements by smashing atoms together in labs. It's like making a super special lego that didn’t exist before!