Chinese element symbols in Unicode

According to Chinese philosophy, there are only five elements:

• Wood 木 (mù)
• Fire 火 (huǒ)
• Earth 土 (tǔ)
• Metal 金 (jīn)
• Water 水 (shuǐ)

The union of five elements is known as 五行 (Wǔ xíng). In Chinese Periodic Table, 金 (jīn) on its own means ‘gold’ while all other solid metals consist of two symbols, jīn + something else, for instance 金 + 白 = 鉑 (platinum). The only liquid metal at room temperature, mercury (汞), does not include 金 but has 水 (shuǐ) instead. There are many versions of Chinese Periodic Table on the web but personally I like this interactive one. Bizarrely, Unicode has three flavours for each of Chinese elements: ‘parenthesized’, ‘circled’ and ‘simple’. Again, I am sure that many people will not see these characters correctly.

Character	Name	Unicode	Decimal	Hexadecimal	Meaning
㈫	PARENTHESIZED IDEOGRAPH FIRE	U+322B	㈫	㈫	Fire (traditional element) or Tuesday
㊋	CIRCLED IDEOGRAPH FIRE	U+328B	㊋	㊋
火	CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-706B	U+706B	火	火
㈬	PARENTHESIZED IDEOGRAPH WATER	U+322C	㈬	㈬	Water (traditional element) or Wednesday
㊌	CIRCLED IDEOGRAPH WATER	U+328C	㊌	㊌
水	CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-6C34	U+6C34	水	水
㈭	PARENTHESIZED IDEOGRAPH WOOD	U+322D	㈭	㈭	Wood (traditional element) or Thursday
㊍	CIRCLED IDEOGRAPH WOOD	U+328D	㊍	㊍
木	CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-6728	U+6728	木	木
㈮	PARENTHESIZED IDEOGRAPH METAL	U+322E	㈮	㈮	Metal (traditional element) or gold (element) or Friday
㊎	CIRCLED IDEOGRAPH METAL	U+328E	㊎	㊎
金	CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-91D1	U+91D1	金	&#91d1;
㈯	PARENTHESIZED IDEOGRAPH EARTH	U+322F	㈯	㈯	Earth (traditional element) or Saturday
㊏	CIRCLED IDEOGRAPH EARTH	U+328F	㊏	㊏
土	CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-571F	U+571F	土	&#571f;

Chemical symbols in Unicode

I was told that the Unicode atom symbol ⚛ (which appeared in my previous post) is not represented correctly in other browsers, or, indeed, other PCs. This is because not all PCs have the fonts installed that can show these characters; or even when the font is there, one has to tell the browser to use it, e.g. <font>⚛</font>. That’s annoying.

Given a number of various symbols present in Unicode, I am surprised how little of them are genuinely related to chemistry, without having any other meaning. In fact, just three. Two of them, ⌬ and ⏣, mean the same and are quite useless — I’d prefer them rotated 90° so one could attach them by “bonds” to something else inline. The third, ⚗, means “chemical term” (in dictionary etc.); the scales, ⚖, even though may appear related to chemistry, really mean “legal term”. See the little table below for these and a few others which may be of some chemical relevance.

Symbol	Name	Unicode	Decimal	Hexadecimal	Meaning
☉	SUN	U+2609	☉	☉	Sun (astrology) or gold (alchemy)
☽	FIRST QUARTER MOON	U+263D	☽	☽	Moon (astrology) or silver (alchemy)
☿	MERCURY	U+263F	☿	☿	Mercury (astrology) or mercury (alchemy)
♀	FEMALE SIGN	U+2640	♀	♀	Venus (astrology) or copper (alchemy)
♁	EARTH	U+2641	♁	♁	Earth (astrology) or antimony (alchemy)
♂	MALE SIGN	U+2642	♂	♂	Mars (astrology) or iron (alchemy)
♃	JUPITER	U+2643	♃	♃	Jupiter (astrology) or tin (alchemy)
♄	SATURN	U+2644	♄	♄	Saturn (astrology) or lead (alchemy)
⌬	BENZENE RING	U+232C	⌬	⌬	Benzene ring (Kekulé structure)
⏣	BENZENE RING WITH CIRCLE	U+23E3	⏣	⏣	Benzene ring (delocalised)
☠	SKULL AND CROSSBONES	U+2620	☠	☠	Poison (chemistry etc.)
☢	RADIOACTIVE SIGN	U+2622	☢	☢	Radioactivity
☣	BIOHAZARD SIGN	U+2623	☣	☣	Biohazard
⚖	SCALES	U+2696	⚖	⚖	Legal term
⚗	ALEMBIC	U+2697	⚗	⚗	Chemical term
⚛	ATOM SYMBOL	U+269B	⚛	⚛	Nuclear installation