What is the significance of the chemical symbols

But before the introduction of chemistry and becoming an individual field from science, the scientists or the alchemist used series of arcane symbols to represent the chemical elements and compounds. Scientist John Dalton was the first to design his own set of symbols for elements and molecules. Later it was Berzelius who gave the method of the typographical method in which the elements were symbolized with letters of their name or their ancient names. The general idea behind giving symbols to the elements was that even though these elements names were written differently in different languages these symbols played a common role in representing each of the chemical elements.

Thus with the advancement of chemistry hundreds of the chemical elements had been discovered and today all those elements have a unique symbol to represent them. Attention reader! All those who say programming isn't for kids, just haven't met the right mentors yet.

The students will get to learn more about the world of programming in these free classes which will definitely help them in making a wise career choice in the future. Elements and their Symbols Every chemical element like Hydrogen, Helium, Oxygen or Carbon has unique letters to represent them called Symbols.

The symbols have the first letter of their name in uppercase and the second letter in lowercase. It is important to remember that no two elements have the same symbols to represent them.

In few cases, the first letter in the symbol can be the same but the second letter can be never the same.

Look at the following examples in the table for simple one-letter symbols. In the table given below look and try to differentiate the chemical elements as per their second letter in the symbol.

Cuprum Cu Arabic Potassium Kalium K General chemical symbols: When instead of referring to a particular chemical element, the group of chemical elements is referred then they are represented with a set of general symbols not used for names of the specific chemical elements. Significance of the Symbols A symbol gives information on the stoichiometric quantity of the element. As one atom is equal to 6.

It can be interpreted that B has 6. Atomic mass: In a balanced chemical reaction a particular symbol represents the definite mass of a particular element. Simply writing N means one atom of nitrogen which has an atomic mass of 14 u. Consider the chemical reaction shown below.

Is it easy to write Water product formed or simply H 2 O? With symbols right! Identity: Every symbol is unique for every unique elements. There should be no misunderstanding or misinterpretation while assigning or reading the chemical symbols. Some Examples to understand:.

But, which way of writing the reaction is easier and more informative? Just looking at chemical reaction b, one could infer that hydrogen and oxygen reactants reacted under certain conditions to give water product. For example, the symbol O denotes one atom of the element oxygen. For example, the symbol O represents one mole of oxygen i. For example, the symbol O refers to 1 gram atomic mass of oxygen.

Question Papers. Textbook Solutions MCQ Online Tests. Important Solutions 1. Question Bank Solutions Time Tables. Advertisement Remove all ads. Short Note. What is the significance of the symbol of an element? Explain with the help of an example. Solution Show Solution The symbol of an element is a short form used to represent individual elements or the atoms of the elements.