Potassium Potassium Potassium is a chemical element with symbol K (from Neo-Latin "kalium") and atomic number 19. It was first isolated from potash, the ashes of plants, from which its name derives. In the periodic table, potassium is one of the alkali metals. All of the alkali metals have a single valence electron in the outer electron shell, which is easily removed to create an ion with a positive charge – a cation, which combines with anions to form salts. Potassium in nature occurs only in ionic salts. Elemental potassium is a soft silvery-white alkali metal that oxidizes rapidly in air
Atomic domain Atomic domain In mathematics, more specifically ring theory, an atomic domain or factorization domain is an integral domain, every non-zero non-unit of which can be written (in at least one way) as a (finite) product of irreducible elements. Atomic domains are different from unique factorization domains in that this decomposition of an element into irreducibles need not be unique; stated differently, an irreducible element is not necessarily a prime element. Important examples of atomic domains include the class of all unique factorization domains and all Noetherian domains. More generally, any integral domain satisfying the ascending chain condition on principal ideals