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
Standard atomic weight "atomic" either, as it does not correspond to the property of any individual atom. The same argument could be made against "relative atomic mass" used in this sense. IUPAC publishes one formal value for each stable element, called the "standard atomic weight". Any updates are published biannually (in uneven years). The last change was published in 2015, setting a new value for ytterbium In 2017, no changes were published. The value published can have and uncertainty be an "interval" like for neon: , or can be an interval, like for boron: [10.806, 10.821]. Next to these 84 values, IUPAC also