Elements

Elements

Elements are everywhere. They are the building blocks of everything on Earth: pencil, desk, mountains, car, book, etc. Do you know that when you are breathing you are actually inhaling air? The air you breathe is made up of many elements like oxygen, nitrogen and argon.

An element is a pure substance that cannot be broken down by chemical methods into simpler components. For example, the element gold cannot be broken down into anything other than gold. If you keep hitting gold with a hammer, the pieces would get smaller, but each piece will always be gold.

Elements consist of only one type of atoms. An atom is the smallest particle of an element that still has the same properties of that element.

All atoms of a specific element have exactly the same chemical makeup, size, and mass. Each atom has an atomic number, which represents the number of protons that are in the nucleus of a single atom of that element. There are a total of 118 elements. Many elements occur naturally on Earth; however, some are created in laboratory by scientists.

1. Symbols of Elements

A symbol is an image, object, etc. , that stands for some meaning. For instance, a dove is a symbol of peace. Similarly, we denote mathematical operations by symbols. For example ‘+’ denotes addition; ‘–’ denotes subtraction etc. In the same way in chemistry each element is denoted by a symbol. Writing out the name of an element every time would become too troublesome. So, the name of an element is represented by shortened form called as symbol. Let us learn the brief history of symbols of elements.

a. Greek Symbols

The symbols in the form of geometrical shapes were used by the ancient Greeks to represent the four basic elements around us such as earth, air, fire and water.

 b. Alchemist Symbols

In the days of alchemists, different materials that people used were represented by different symbols while they tried to change less valuable metal into gold. That process was called alchemy and the men who did this work were known as alchemists.

c. Dalton Symbols

In 1808, John Dalton, English scientist tried to name various elements based on pictorial symbols. Those symbols are difficult to draw and hence they are not used. It is only of historical importance.

d. Berzelius Symbols

In 1813, Jon Jakob Berzelius devised a system using letters of alphabet rather than signs. The modified version of Berzelius system follows under the heading ‘System for Determining Symbols of the Elements’.

e. Present system for determining symbols of the elements

1. The symbols of the most common elements, mainly non-metals, use the first letter of their English name.

2. If two elements have same first letter, then the first and second letters of the name are used as symbols. The first letter is in uppercase and the second letter is in lowercase.

3. If the first two letters of the names of the elements are same, then the symbol consists of first letter and second or third letter of English name that they do not have in common.

4. Some symbols are used on the basis of their Greek name or Latin name of the elements. There are eleven such elements.

5. Some elements are named using the name of the country / scientist / colour / mythological character / planet.

2. Writing the Symbols

While writing the symbol for an element, we should adhere to the following rules.

1. If the element has a single English letter as a symbol, it should be written in capital letter.

2. For elements having two letter symbols, the first letter should be in capital followed by small letter