What is the difference between an element, compound, and molecule?

Atoms can be classified into elements. For example, all the atoms in a piece of sodium are sodium because they all have the same number of protons.

Chemical bonds, which connect the atoms' nuclei to the electrons they contain, are what give a compound its structure.

Chemical bonds can be classified into three general types: ionic, covalent, and metallic. The type of compound that results from the application of a bond determines whether it is an alloy, an ionic compound, or a molecular compound (which uses covalent bonds).

When atoms next to each other SHARED one or more pairs of electrons, it created a covalent bond.

A molecule is the smallest unit of a molecular compound that retains the compound's properties, both chemical and physical, and is a neutral particle with no overall charge that is bound together by covalent bonds.

I won't go into too much detail in this response, but you need to understand electronegativity in order to determine if something is held together by covalent bonds.

To summarize, an element is a single type of atom, a compound is a term used to refer to multiple elements that are chemically bonded, and a molecule is a neutral particle that is bound together by covalent bonds.

A compound is a substance made up of two or more different types of atoms bonded together chemically; an element is a substance made up of only one type of atom; a molecule is the smallest particle of a compound that retains the chemical properties of that compound.