How the character is built
The 钅 radical marks this as a metal, and that is not a coincidence of this one character — it holds right across the table. Read the radical first and the element's state at room temperature is already settled. It is 金 (jīn) squeezed into the space beside another component — radicals change shape by position, which is why 金 is hard to spot until you know to look for 钅.
Where you actually meet it
钡餐 (bèicān) barium meal, for medical imaging
The element itself
Barite is heavy in the hand in a way that surprises people — noticeably denser than it looks — and that single property accounts for most of what barium is used for. Mixed into drilling mud, it makes the fluid heavy enough to hold back the pressure of whatever the drill bit hits, which is the difference between a controlled well and a blowout. Barium compounds also burn green in fireworks, and the metal itself is reactive enough to be stored under oil.
Where it sits among the 118
First isolated in 1808.
Where it comes from in China
Barium comes from barite, and China's barite is largely bedded — laid down in layers on the seafloor rather than filling veins — in the Cambrian black shales of eastern Guizhou and western Hunan. Those shales settled on an oxygen-poor shelf where barium-bearing fluids seeping out of the sediment met sulfate in seawater and precipitated on the spot. Most of it ends up as drilling mud, because barite is dense, cheap and chemically indifferent to almost everything.
The full entry
For stroke order, example sentences, audio and the complete set of meanings, see the dictionary entry.
钡Barium in the dictionary →Others built the same way
Every one of these carries 钅, and every one is a metal.