About
The character 锫 is a modern phono-semantic compound. Its left radical 钅 (the traditional form is 釒) denotes a metal, placing the element within the chemical classification system. The right component 埍 supplies the phonetic value "péi", approximating the English pronunciation. This character was created to represent berkelium, the synthetic radioactive element with atomic number 97, exemplifying how Chinese scientific terminology integrates foreign concepts by combining a semantic category with a phonetic clue.