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.
This character is used for the element and little else — you are unlikely to meet it outside a chemistry classroom.
The element itself
Gallium melts at just under 30°C, which means a lump of it will slump into a puddle in a warm palm — the classic lecture demonstration, and a real nuisance for anyone storing it. It also has one of the widest liquid ranges of any element, staying molten until well over two thousand degrees. There is no gallium ore; it hides at trace levels in bauxite and zinc ores, and every gram of it is skimmed from the liquors of aluminium and zinc refining. It also embrittles aluminium badly on contact, so the two are kept well apart.
Where it sits among the 118
First isolated in 1875.
Where it comes from in China
Gallium is a shadow of the aluminium industry: it substitutes for aluminium in bauxite at trace levels and is skimmed from the caustic liquor during alumina refining, so wherever alumina is made in quantity, gallium follows. China's bauxite is mostly karst bauxite — residual clay that accumulated in sinkholes and hollows on the surface of ancient limestone in Shanxi, Henan, Guizhou and Guangxi. It is harder ore to treat than the tropical bauxites of Guinea or Australia, but there is a great deal of it.
The full entry
For stroke order, example sentences, audio and the complete set of meanings, see the dictionary entry.
镓Gallium in the dictionary →Others built the same way
Every one of these carries 钅, and every one is a metal.