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
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