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.
Phonetic 衣 yī 'clothing', for the 'i-' of iridium.
This character is used for the element and little else — you are unlikely to meet it outside a chemistry classroom.
The element itself
Iridium is extraordinarily rare in Earth's crust — it is siderophile, meaning it prefers to dissolve in iron, and nearly all of it sank into the core while the planet was young. Meteorites, which never differentiated that way, retain theirs. That is why a thin clay layer laid down at the end of the Cretaceous, found worldwide and enriched in iridium far beyond any crustal value, was such damning evidence: the simplest explanation for that much iridium spread evenly over a planet is that something large arrived from outside it.
Where it sits among the 118
First isolated in 1803.
The full entry
For stroke order, example sentences, audio and the complete set of meanings, see the dictionary entry.
铱Iridium in the dictionary →Others built the same way
Every one of these carries 钅, and every one is a metal.