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
Molybdenite is soft, grey, greasy and will mark paper, which is exactly why it was confused for centuries with both graphite and lead ore — the name comes from the Greek word for lead, applied to anything that left a dark streak. Once separated, molybdenum turned out to have one of the highest melting points of any metal and to make steel enormously tougher, which took it from curiosity to strategic material within a generation. Most of it is scraped out of porphyry copper mines as a by-product, though a few deposits are rich enough to be worked for molybdenum alone.
Where it sits among the 118
First isolated in 1781.
In living things
Molybdenum is the one heavy transition metal that life uses widely, and the reason is oceanographic: as molybdate it is soluble and unreactive, making it the most abundant transition metal in modern seawater, whereas iron rusts out of solution. Its showpiece is the iron–molybdenum cofactor of nitrogenase, the cluster that breaks atmospheric nitrogen. In our own cells it arrives on a cofactor called molybdopterin and runs sulfite oxidase and xanthine oxidase — enzymes that dispose of sulfur and purine waste, which is why an element present in milligram quantities is nonetheless indispensable.
Where it comes from in China
Molybdenum in China comes from the porphyry belt of the East Qinling mountains — Luanchuan in Henan and Jinduicheng in Shaanxi. A porphyry deposit forms when a shallow granite body cools, boils off its water and shatters its own roof, leaving a dense stockwork of hairline veinlets plated with molybdenite. The metal is spread thinly through an enormous volume of rock, which is why such mines are vast open pits rather than tunnels chasing a seam.
The full entry
For stroke order, example sentences, audio and the complete set of meanings, see the dictionary entry.
钼Molybdenum in the dictionary →Others built the same way
Every one of these carries 钅, and every one is a metal.