About
The character 铋 (bì) represents the post-transition metal bismuth and is a modern coinage created to accommodate Western chemical nomenclature and the periodic table within Chinese. It follows the standard pattern for metallic elements, pairing the metal radical 钅 (jīn) on the left with the phonetic 必 (bì) on the right to form a phono-semantic compound. The traditional form 鉍 uses the unsimplified radical 金 (jīn) with the same phonetic and serves as its direct equivalent in scientific, chemical, and industrial literature.
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