I do not uderstand the meaning of Eka - Boron . What is the meaning of Eka?

1 Answer
anor277
Jul 15, 2017

Well, we owe this term to old Mendeleev......

Explanation:

Well, you know that when Mendeleev initially published the Periodic Table (1869), he was astute enuff to realize that not all of the elements had been characterized or identified. He accounted for apparent gaps in his then Table, by using the prefixes eka, dvi, and tri depending on whether the gap was one, two, or three rows down from a known element. The prefixes eka, dvi, and tri are Sanskrit for one, two, three.........

And thus eka-silicon was one period down from silicon. The discovery of the element germanium (1886, soon after old Mendeleev's first published his Table) with precisely the properties predicted for eka silicon was powerful evidence for the utility and correctness of Mendeleev's periodic approach.

See this site for a (free!) article detailing Periodicity. There is probably much more information here than you need.

Just as a note that you might find amusing, when you read a detective novel, sometimes the crim uses an alias, and the detectives refer to him as Joe Blow also known as Fred Smith; the also known as part is often abbreviated to aka, which in these circumstances is apt.........

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