léi
noun #20,510

Meanings

  1. 1 radium (chemical element Ra, atomic number 88)

Examples

Léi shì yī zhǒng fàngshèxìng yuánsù.
Radium is a radioactive element.
Jūlǐ Fūrén fāxiàn le léi hé pō liǎng zhǒng yuánsù.
Marie Curie discovered two elements: radium and polonium.

Tips

history
Radium was discovered in 1898 by Marie and Pierre Curie, who isolated it from uranium ore (pitchblende). Marie Curie's pioneering work on radioactivity, for which she won two Nobel Prizes, was conducted at great personal cost — chronic radiation exposure contributed to her death in 1934.

Components

radical
jīn
metal (radical form of 金)
Left-side metal radical, the compressed form of used on the left of compound characters. Indexes in the chemical-element family — coined names where + a phonetic give a specific metal: uranium, plutonium, beryllium, radium. Modern Chinese coinage applied to the periodic table.
phonetic
léi
thunder (here phonetic)
Right supplies the sound — same léi, same tone, a textbook phonetic. itself is rain over field, originally picturing thunderclouds over farmland. The choice of phonetic also nods quietly to radium's electric, glow-in-the-dark character, fitting an element discovered for its lightning-like emanations.

Stroke Order

léi