Water element in ancient Mesopotamia
Some of the first materials that were represented in the first cultures of antiquity was water, for example in the ancient Mesopotamia it was represented with a wavy horizontal line, in ancient Egypt the representation of this was a horizontal line in the form of Zigzag thatindicated the waves that appear on the surface of the water;The symbols of water and the other elements were evolving over time, for example in the Middle Ages the water was represented with an empty circle.
The first symbols, names and classification of elementary and compound substances, varied according to its author;For example in the fourth century D.C. Zósimo called spirits to substances that could be distilled, such as mercury. In the time of Dalton the sign for the oxygen element was an empty circle, that of the hydrogen element a circle with a point in the center, while the water symbol was formed by joining the circles that represented oxygen and hydrogen.
Antoine Lavoisier, together with other important French chemists, created the foundations of the current nomenclature, in 1787 they published the chemical nomenclature method, this contains the rules to name the substances known until that time, as well as their representation in a simple and abbreviated way,All this with the purpose of unifying the language used until then in chemistry. This work marked a chemical revolution, because Lavoisier developed a list classifying elementary substances and compound substances, which allowed the authors to establish different names for each type of substance.
Elementary substances were designated with a unique name, which could have several origins, such as their chemical properties, physical characteristics and even some came from the alchemical tradition and some others of myths and beliefs, such as the case of arsenic and cobalt.
On the other hand, the composite substances were designated by binary names, that is, formed by two words using the roots of elementary substances to indicate their chemical composition, thus the substance that had been known until that time as vitriole tartar, ArcanoDuplicate or polyrestic salt of Glaser, it was called potassa sulfate, the multiple synonyms designated for the same substance were eliminated and a unique criterion was established, appointing the substances composed from their chemical compositions. With the passage of time, various modifications were made to Lavoisier’s ideas, however, it is important to highlight their influence on the chemical terminology of numerous substances.
Thus, the use of roots and words, prefixes and suffixes, which indicate the relative proportion of elementary substances in a compound substance, remains the basis of a good part of the terminology of inorganic chemistry.
In the nineteenth century, the Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob von Berzelius proposed a new notation to represent the elementary substances, from the initials of the Latin name in a row followed by another present in the name, in the event that two elementary substances had thesame initial;This symbology constitutes the basis of the current representation, and is still used, since it is very simple and logical.
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