Origin of chemical element symbols
Students, do you know anything about chemical news? Do you know who invented the chemical element symbol? How is it named?
Bezelius (also translated as pazilias) was praised as the greatest chemist in the middle of the 19th century. He was knowledgeable and had deep academic attainments. He also invented the simplest way to express element symbols, which is the well-known element symbols.
After textual research, the word “Chemistry” comes from Arabic and originally means “alchemy”. In ancient times, people dreamed of “turning stone into gold”. Alchemists accumulated a lot of chemical knowledge in the process of smelting minerals. “Chemistry” is called “alchemy”.
Alchemists are afraid that others will know their secrets and use various strange symbols to represent chemical elements. For example, the sun represents gold, because gold shines like the sun, and the moon represents silver, because silver shines like the moon… As for some “secret” symbols, they don’t know.
Later, Dalton, a British chemist, used various circles to represent chemical symbols. In 1808, Dalton used 20 circles to represent 20 element symbols respectively in his book the new system of chemical philosophy. Limited to the cognitive level at that time, Dalton also regarded lime and caustic potassium as chemical elements. These circles are simpler than the chemical symbols of alchemists, but it is still a very troublesome thing to draw them all in a chemical paper.
Once, bezelius sent his paper to the printing factory for typesetting. The workers complained, “we don’t have these circles. If you draw a circle in your paper, we will make a” circle “type!” The circles cast by the workers are large and small, which are very ugly in the paper after printing.
What to do, betherius thought, holding his chin in his hand. He wondered if he could use ordinary English letters to represent chemical elements?
Finally, he developed a set of methods to represent chemical elements. He suggested using the Latin initial letter of the element symbol as the chemical symbol of this element. For example, the Latin symbol of oxygen is oxygenium and the chemical symbol is o. The Latin for nitrogen is nitrogenium and the chemical symbol is n. The Latin for carbon is carbonium and the chemical symbol is C.
If there are two or more chemical elements with the same Latin initial letter, one of them will write another lowercase letter after the initial letter. For example, the Latin of copper is cuprum and the initial letter is C, which is the same as carbon, and the chemical symbol will be Cu.
In 1813, bezelius published his new nomenclature on the symbols of chemical elements in the journal philosophical Yearbook. His paper soon won the support of chemists all over the world, because the new nomenclature can clearly represent various chemical elements only with ordinary Latin letters, which is convenient for writing and typesetting. A year later, in the same journal, he wrote an article on the writing rules of chemical formula. He numbered the number of atoms in the upper right corner of the element symbol. For example, CO2, SO2, H20… Etc.
But Dalton firmly opposed it. He was used to those circles and couldn’t see the new naming method of bezelius. Dalton used his circles until his death.
In the autumn of 1860, the first international conference of Chinese chemists was held in karruhe, Germany. The Conference unanimously adopted the symbolic nomenclature of chemical elements proposed by bezerius. Since then, chemical papers and textbooks in various countries have adopted this nomenclature until today. Since then, there have been unified and simple symbols representing chemical elements in the world, and the chemical community has a common language, which has promoted the development of chemistry.
