Question

Give the symbols of carbon, calcium, copper, chlorine, cobalt, argon.

Answer 1

Chemical symbols are abbreviations used in chemistry for chemical elements to represent reactions, molecules and complexes. The chemical symbols for chemical elements are taken from the Latin alphabets. The Chemical symbols were given in one or two letters, with the first letter written in capitalized forms.

Complete Solution :
Let us first know who are persons who introduced the chemical symbols to different elements.
- Antoine Lavoisier was the first one to introduce the system of chemical nomenclature. This book also contained a list of 33 elements or the substances that could not be broken down further.
-John Dalton is the other one who gave a new set of standard symbols to different chemical elements in his book named ‘New System’ in the year 1808. He gave symbols to the 36 known elements of that time.
-Berzelius was a Swedish chemist who suggested the use of letters for representing the elements. Using these criteria, he named 47 known elements of that time.

-He named elements in the following manner-
- In the first class, which he called metalloids, he employed the initial letter only as a chemical sign.
- In the second class of metals, he used the first two letters of the word as a chemical sign.
- When two metals have the first two letters in common, then he adds the initial letter of the first consonant which they have not in common.
- Mendeleev was the one Scientist who had assembled detailed descriptions of more than 60 elements. In his classification, he arranged elements according to their atomic weights and the chemical elements with similar properties have nearly similar atomic weights.
- This classification is the most accepted system of classification as it gave places even for the unknown elements.
- Recently, a three-letter temporary symbol is also used to assign the symbol to newly synthesized elements like Unniloctium which has the symbol as ‘Uno’.
-Following the above rules and the universally accepted chemical symbols for carbon, calcium, copper, chlorine, cobalt, argon are given below:

C- Carbon
Ca- Calcium
Cu- Copper
Cl- Chlorine
Co- Cobalt
Ar- Argon

Note: -We are also using a standard symbol for representing the atomic number and mass number. Atomic symbol is represented by Z and the mass number is represented by A.
- we are representing the mass number above the chemical element and atomic number below. The chemical element X with mass and atomic number are represented in the following format, $_Z{X^A}$.