Potassium tree leaves, adding water, heating, and evaporating the solution. When Humphry Davy first isolated the pure element using electrolysis in 1807, he named it "potassium", which he derived from the word potash. The symbol "K" stems from "kali", itself from the root word "alkali", which in turn comes from "" "al-qalyah" "plant ashes." In 1797, the German chemist Martin Klaproth discovered "potash" in the minerals leucite and lepidolite, and realized that "potash" was not a product of plant growth but actually contained a new element, which he proposed to call "kali". In 1807, Humphry Davy produced the element via electrolysis:
Chemical element of whether or not they are ionized or chemically bonded, e.g. hydrogen in water) as well as for a pure chemical substance consisting of a single element (e.g. hydrogen gas). For the second meaning, the terms "elementary substance" and "simple substance" have been suggested, but they have not gained much acceptance in English chemical literature, whereas in some other languages their equivalent is widely used (e.g. French ', Russian '). A single element can form multiple substances differing in their structure; they are called allotropes of the element. When different elements are chemically combined, with the atoms held together by