Element Symbol Sprint

Sixty seconds to match as many element symbols to their names as you can. Pick how much of the periodic table you want to be tested on, then go. Your best score for each setting is kept in your browser.

How to play

Choose whether you want to be shown a symbol and asked for the name, or shown a name and asked for the symbol. Then choose your range. Press start and you have sixty seconds.

Every question gives you four options. Click one, or press the number keys 1 to 4 if you are on a keyboard, which is a good deal faster. A right answer scores a point and moves straight on. A wrong answer shows you the correct one for a moment before moving on, so a mistake costs you time rather than points.

When the clock runs out you get your score, your best score for that exact setting, and a list of everything you missed with a link to each element. That list is the useful part. It is worth reading before you play again.

Which range should you pick?

First 20 elements takes you from hydrogen to calcium. This is the set almost every introductory course expects you to know without looking, because it covers the elements that show up in basic bonding, electron configuration, and simple equations.

First 36 elements runs through to krypton, which adds the first row of transition metals. That row is where symbols start to get awkward, and it is the range most general chemistry courses actually test.

All 118 includes the lanthanides, the actinides, and the synthetic superheavy elements. Nobody needs these memorized. Play this range for fun, or to find out how much of the bottom of the table you have quietly absorbed.

Why the symbols are not always obvious

Most symbols are the first letter or two of the English name. Some are not, and those are the ones that cost you points. They come from the element's older Latin or Greek name, from a time when Latin was the shared language of European science.

There is a pattern worth noticing in that list. Nearly all of them are metals that people worked with in the ancient world, long before anyone knew what an element was. Gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, lead, and mercury were all known and named in antiquity, so their Latin names were already fixed by the time chemistry got around to writing symbols. Tungsten is the odd one out, named from German rather than Latin.

The rule for writing symbols

A symbol is one or two letters. The first is always a capital and the second is always lower case. Co is cobalt, the element. CO is carbon monoxide, a compound of two elements. That single change of case turns one substance into a completely different one, which is why chemists are strict about it and why exam markers take the point off.

Frequently asked questions