Chemical symbolįrom the Latin Argentum which originally meant shining metalįrom the Latin Aurum which originally meant yellowįrom Cuprum, the Latin name for Cyprus, the Roman source of copperįrom the Latin Hydragyrummeaning liquid silverįrom Natrium, the Latin namefor sodium carbonateįrom the Latin Plumbummeaning soft white metalįrom the Latin Stibiummeaning cosmetic powderįrom Wolfram, an old name for the element derived from its ore, Wolframite Visit Bodycote’s new Interactive Periodic Table to view this information and more graphically. ( See also periodic table of the elements.
Each element is followed by its atomic number, the total number of protons in the atomic nucleus. In those cases, the origin of the symbol used is given. Here, the elements are ordered alphabetically. A very few elements have symbols which appear to have no relationship with their names. In some cases, the first letter together with some other letter from their name was used, particularly when their first two letters had already been allocated to another element. Most chemical elements are represented symbolically by two letters, generally the first two in their name. The basic particle that constitutes a chemical element is the. Powdermet® Selective surface net shape (SSNS)Īnti-Slavery and Human Trafficking Statement A chemical element is a chemical substance that cannot be broken down into other substances. Sub-critical annealing / intercritical annealing Specialty Stainless Steel Processes (S 3P) Precipitation hardening: Stainless steels Update: Here’s a visualization of the categories above.Case hardening with subsequent hardening operationĬase hardening without subsequent hardening operationįluidised bed/salt bath nitriding/nitrocarburising For example, cadmium could not be C because that’s carbon, and it could not be Ca because that’s calcium. Many of these elements would cause a conflict if they had been abbreviated using one of the above rules. The next largest group of elements are abbreviated by their first letter and the next consonant, skipping over a vowel. Xenon could have been X, or dysprosium could have been just D, but that’s not how it was done. For example: actinium, aluminum, americium, and argon. There are several elements that start with the same letter, and no element uses just the first letter. For example, helium uses He because hydrogen already took H. Many of these elements use the first two letters to avoid a conflict with the first letter. When in doubt, guess the first two letters. The largest group of elements are those abbreviated by the first two letters of their name. Also, shells dont stack neatly one on top of another, so dont always assume an elements valence is determined by the number of electrons in its outer shell. The easiest abbreviations to remember are simply the first letters of the element names (in English). Remember that an elements electron cloud will become more stable by filling, emptying, or half-filling the shell. I included Tungsten in this section because it also has an abbreviation that is mnemonic in another language, in this case German. The elements that have been known the longest often have abbreviations that are mnemonic in Latin. Here’s a survey of how the elements are abbreviated. If you don’t know the abbreviation for an element, is there a simple algorithm that would let you narrow the range of possibilities or improve your odds at guessing? I’ve wondered occasionally about the patterns in how chemical elements are abbreviated.
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