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:
Potassium tert-butoxide Potassium tert-butoxide Potassium "tert"-butoxide is the chemical compound with the formula K(CH)CO. This colourless solid is a strong base (pKa of conjugate acid around 17), which is useful in organic synthesis. It exists as a tetrameric cubane-type cluster. It is often seen written in chemical literature as potassium "t"-butoxide. The compound is often depicted as a salt, and it often behaves as such, but it is not ionized in solution. Potassium "t"-butoxide is commercially available as a solution and as a solid, but it is often generated "in situ" for laboratory use because samples are so sensitive and older samples