Chemical symbols are used to make the names of elements shorter. Chemists (scientists who study chemistry) all over the world use the same symbols. For example, the symbol “Al” means aluminum no matter where you are in the world, even though the name for aluminum might vary.

All chemical symbols are either one or two letters. If it has only one letter, it is always capitalized, and if it has two letters, the first letter is always capitalized and the second letter is lower case. For example, you learned earlier that water is made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom joined together. Hydrogen and oxygen are both elements. The chemical symbol for hydrogen is “H” and oxygen’s chemical symbol is “O”.

The picture at the left is an image of a helium filled discharge tube shaped like the element’s atomic symbol (He).