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Chemical symbols are the abbreviations used in chemistry, mainly for chemical elements; but also for functional groups, chemical compounds, and other entities. Element symbols for chemical elements, also known as atomic symbols , normally consist of one or two letters from the Latin alphabet and are written with the first letter capitalised.
A chemical element, often simply called an element, is a type of atom which has a specific number of protons in its atomic nucleus (i.e., a specific atomic number, or Z). [ 1 ] The definitive visualisation of all 118 elements is the periodic table of the elements , whose history along the principles of the periodic law was one of the founding ...
The chemical elements are what the periodic table classifies and organizes. Hydrogen is the element with atomic number 1; helium, atomic number 2; lithium, atomic number 3; and so on. Each of these names can be further abbreviated by a one- or two-letter chemical symbol; those for hydrogen, helium, and lithium are respectively H, He, and Li. [6]
There are also symbols in chemical equations for groups of elements, for example in comparative formulas. These are often a single capital letter, and the letters are reserved and not used for names of specific elements.
Alchemical symbols were used to denote chemical elements and compounds, as well as alchemical apparatus and processes, until the 18th century. Although notation was partly standardized, style and symbol varied between alchemists.
The first letter is always capitalized. While the symbol is often a contraction of the element's name, it may sometimes not match the element's English name; for example, "Pb" for lead (from Latin plumbum) or "W" for tungsten (from German Wolfram). Elements which have only temporary systematic names are given temporary three-letter symbols (e.g ...
A list of formulae in Hill system order is arranged alphabetically, as above, with single-letter elements coming before two-letter symbols when the symbols begin with the same letter (so "B" comes before "Be", which comes before "Br"). [5] The following example formulae are written using the Hill system, and listed in Hill order: BrClH 2 Si ...
Chemical symbols; Electronic symbol ... List of mathematical constants (typically letters and compound symbols) ... the middle one is an outline with a number inside ...