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All 118 elements

Element 44 ·transition metal

钌

liǎo — "ruthenium"

Ruthenium

Traditional: 釕

How the character is built

钅

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.

The character also has a reading liào in the unrelated word 钌铞儿 'door latch', but the element is liǎo.

This character is used for the element and little else — you are unlikely to meet it outside a chemistry classroom.

Where it sits among the 118

Ruthenium melts at 2334°C (2607 K) — lower than 7 of the 97 elements whose melting point has been measured, and higher than 89. The grey dots are the rest of the table.
In the Earth's crust there is about 1 milligrams in every tonne of rock. That makes it commoner than 13 of the 93 elements that occur naturally at all. The scale is logarithmic: each gridline is ten times the one below it.

First isolated in 1844.

The full entry

For stroke order, example sentences, audio and the complete set of meanings, see the dictionary entry.

钌Ruthenium in the dictionary →

Others built the same way

Every one of these carries 钅, and every one is a metal.

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