Four Newly Discovered Elements Receive Names (theverge.com) 191
Press2ToContinue quotes a report from The Verge: The proposed names for recently discovered superheavy elements are: Nihonium and symbol Nh, for the element 113; Moscovium and symbol Mc, for the element 115; Tennessine and symbol Ts, for the element 117; Oganesson and symbol Og, for the element 118. This isn't finalized. Not sure I even like some of these, and maybe you feel the same way. Above are the proposed names that will substitute for the current placeholders (e.g., ununpentium, ununseptium). Nilhonium, Moscovium, and Tennesine are all named for places; Oganessen is named for the Russian physicist Yuri Oganessian. But we have until November to lobby for other names. Here's a chance to go down in history and name an element on the periodic table. How about naming one Elementy McElementface?
Gangsta (Score:2)
Oganesson and symbol Og
So THAT is what they mean when they say someone is the "OG"...
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Considering that it's a superheavy element...
IS THAT A FAT JOKE???
Elerium-115 (Score:5, Funny)
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Um, they all do. All the way to the edge of the universe.
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All the way to the edge of the universe.
It's turtles all the way down, my friend. All the way down.
So.... "turtlanium" and "waydownium"?
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With the symbol "Brk"?
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More seriously, I hope we get to 137 while all the researchers who want to name it Feynmanium (Fy) are still alive. He certainly deserves it, plus he published a paper about that element and the problem it posed for theory at the time. (For those who don't know, 137 is a special number to physicists - half of them probably have it as the combination to their briefcases - it's from the fine structure constant, and shows up all over the place).
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Wouldn't that imply that "Elerium-115" would just be an alternative name for indium (atomic weight 114.818) or one of the nearby elements (e.g. cadmium, tin)?
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90's video game pseudo science! Woo!
Elements named after locations (Score:3)
Elements being named after locations is not exactly new, so I don't understand the submitters whining.
Terbium, Holmium, Ytterbium, Erbium, Thulium, Lutetium, Hassium... The list goes on...
Re:Elements named after locations (Score:5, Funny)
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You can never have too many elements named after tiny Swedish villages. I'm voting for Luspebrygganium next! ;)
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Fascinating. What was the town's name before the earthquake?
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correction: "tiny Swedish village", i.e. singular. Yttrium (Y), erbium (Er), terbium (Tb), and ytterbium (Yb) are all named after the same tiny Swedish village (Ytterby).
Americans will spell it Moscovum (Score:2)
Re:Americans will spell it Moscovum (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sorry, but "aluminium" is outright wrong.
Humphry Davy, the man who isolated it, never called it that. He called it "aluminum" and "alumium". Never aluminium. The latter was suggested by an anonymous critic who said that he didn't like the sound of aluminum, that it didn't sound "classical" enough to him. Never mind that the classical elements were overwhelmingly -um, not -ium: ferrum, plumbum, argentum, stannum, cuprum, aurum, hydrargyrum, etc. The first element ending in -um added to the known elements since ancient times was platinum, also not a -ium. Also discovered before aluminum were molybdenum and tantalum.
The reason that many elements started getting endings of -ium rather than just -um wasn't because "-ium was more classical" - it's because they were often named after the things they were isolated from which often had i near the end, making it a convenient joining stem - magnesium from magnesia, zirconium from zirconia, yttrium from yttria, and on and on. Some did it indirectly as well, such as beryllium, which was originally glucium (from glucina), but had the gluc- replaced with beryl to distinguish it from other sweet-compound-forming elements. If you want to use -i as the joining stem on aluminum, it should be called alumium - which is one of the names Davy suggested. It comes from alumina, not "aluminia".
Call it alumium if you want (that would be a perfectly reasonable name), but your added, ahistorical syllable addition in "aluminium" will continue to grate on my ears. There's no such thing as "aluminia"
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Great. Now when you've only got one atom/piece of it, nobody will know if they should call it alumn or alumnus.
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To nitpick a bit, Humphry Davy never isolated it, he tried, but didn't get there.
According to the Wikipedia article the one credited with isolating aluminium was the German scientist Friedrich Wöhler in 1827.
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Careful, think about it. This is just what the Aluminati want you to think!
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I think Icelandic was right to just avoid the whole conflict altogether and just call it "ál" ;)
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Which grouping of words is real?
#1
Alumina
Aluminate
Aluminosilicate
Aluminothermic
#2:
Aluminia
Aluminiate
Aluminiosilicate
Aluminiothermic
In no way is the root of aluminum "alumini". It's either "alumin" or just "alum". Again, calling it "alumium" would be just fine. But "aluminium" is just wrong. And ahistorical.
I know, it's weird to have a strong opinion about an issue like this... [xkcd.com]
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Nevertheless, aluminium is the most widely-accepted spelling.
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IUPAC uses both words about equally often and considers both valid - and they're the authority on the issue (this is actually a change from their earlier stance, where they had tried to force aluminium as the standard).
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IUPAC uses both words about equally often and considers both valid - and they're the authority on the issue (this is actually a change from their earlier stance, where they had tried to force aluminium as the standard).
That is not really different from what the poster you are replying to said. IUPAC made the name "aluminium" official, the rest of the world adopted it, the US refused to go along, and finally IUPAC gave up and allowed the idiosyncratic American usage as an acceptable one.
Fortunately they are sticking to their guns regarding the metric system.
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The people who walked on the moon had aluminum equipment.
That's all "the rest of the world" needs to know.
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The British English term for reducing a substance with lithium is a lithiothermic reaction.
The British English term for reducing a substance with magnesium is a magnesiothermic reaction.
The British English term for reducing a substance with sodium is a sodiothermic reaction.
The British English term for reducing a substance with calcium is a calciothermic reaction.
The British English term for reducing a substance with aluminum is a aluminothermic reaction. No "i".
At least be consistent with your ahistorical
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In all fairness, the coffee was freezing. I told him exactly how I like my coffee, at 40 degrees, just above body temperature, and that ingrate imbecile put my perfectly steaming coffee in the fridge for half an hour!
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If you coffee was steaming at 40 degrees, the air pressure must have been rather low. As in, less than 10% of standard pressure.
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Believe me, coffee can be steaming in Winter without first climbing on top of a mountain.
Boiling, ok, but who'd want his coffee boiling?
I can't be the only one wondering... (Score:5, Informative)
This article is tagged Japan because "Nihonium takes its name from the Japanese name for Japan and was the first new element discovered there, at the RIKEN lab." ( http://www.popsci.com/four-new... [popsci.com] )
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That doesn't matter much (Score:2)
Re:That doesn't matter much (Score:5, Funny)
LEMMIUM! Where's Lemmium? The heaviest element possible.
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I thought that's Yourmomium.
Periodic Videos (Score:5, Informative)
Allow me to push one of my favorite YouTube channels to you. :)
New Elements Named - Periodic Table of Videos :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
FTFY (Score:2)
How about naming one Elementy McElementfaceium?
FTFY
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The -ium suffix is the standard for metals other than those that were already named in ancient times. Helium was named as a metal by mistake, because it was first discovered in the spectrum of the Sun.
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Helium was named as a metal by mistake, because it was first discovered in the spectrum of the Sun.
Seeing as the name of the sun god is/was "Helios," not to mention that "helum" would be weird, I'm skeptical of your claim. I would think that "helium" is the closest pseudo-Latin form of the Greek word.
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Metals are only named -ium because it's a -um stuck on the end of a base word that already had the "i". he suffix is the -um part, the "i" part is (sometimes) from the root. E.g., Helios becomes helium.
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Yes, it was a mistake. When Janssen and Lockyer discovered an unknown set of lines in the spectrum of the Sun in 1868, spectroscopy was a new discipline. They identified it as a "Metal of the Sun." Oopsie!
Og (Score:2)
I miss OGG the open source caveman.
Daltonium (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well, he does have an atomic mass unit named after him, not to mention 4 prominent characters in the best Franco-Belgian western comic book...
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Timothy was the worst Bond ever, that's why.
"Nilhonium"? (Score:3)
Come on, if you're going to insert letters the element's name, at least call it "Nihilonium" - an element that doesn't care whether anything continues to exist or not. ;)
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Cthulhum, the element that devours all?
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Länthium! Länthium!
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Ugh... that should have read "Länthanum"... way to ruin my own joke ;)
I'm going to miss ununpentium (Score:2)
It should be obivous (Score:2)
There should ALWAYS be a Cowboy Neal option in there.
Orangium (Score:5, Funny)
When I'm president, all new elements will be named after me and it will be tremendous. They will be classy, classy elements. Not loser elements like Nihonium.
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What does Trump have to do with this discussion?
Pity for Octarine (Score:2)
I guess this petition [change.org] never had a high chance of succeeding, but it's still a pity we're not going to have octarine in the periodic table.
SlashDotium? (Score:2)
Not sure I even like some of these! (Score:2)
Whatever happened to Lemmium? (Score:2)
Sherlockium (Score:3)
Here is the Actual IUPAC Announcement (Score:2)
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You literally just repeated a joke that's in the summary.
Jesus Fucking Christ. Never mind not RTFA, Slashdotter's don't even RTFS anymore!
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Probably because I read it on New Scientist, yesterday. And really, The Verge as a science source ??
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"Elementy McElementface"
Or, perhaps 'ginsburgium'
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
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This "X McXface" thing is an interesting example of the homogenization of childhood and adulthood.
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Would you catch up an old fart on that meme? I take it the boat wasn't the first appearance...where's the root?
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It reminds me of "X Jock McX, winner of last year's Mr X competition" which IIRC used to crop up in Blackadder when they'd run out of willy jokes, i.e. most of series 2 and 3.
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Of course they do.
Elements 99 and 112 were named in memory of characters from the Back to the Future trilogy.
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how cute, you think this has to do with science.
Naming rights are a reflection of power and prestige.
So. . . Element Privilege ??? /boggle
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One of them should be Dominium (Do) so that we can make a Mc-Do-N-Al-Ds.
And if you get the combo, you ALSO get Francium, Iodine, and Einsteinium. . . .
Re:god no (Score:5, Funny)
They'll probably just get reclassified as dwarf elements one day.
I still don't see Unobtainium on the chart (Score:2)
heck, most of my hobby stuff is made of it. I need a big block to whittle more parts from.
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Yes, I don't know what's wrong with names like ununseptium, at least you can remember them. It's not like people need catchy names for them when they use them in the kitchen. As far as I know, they only exist (briefly) because scientists like to go "hey, quick, come and look, I managed to make one with 117 protons!"
Re:god no (Score:5, Funny)
Well,...since the placeholder names start with "unun", how about:
Unty McUntface.
I can't see anything wrong with that.
Re:god no (Score:5, Informative)
Just because your own knowledge of a word ends with the greek origin doesn't mean that the word itself didn't enter the greek language itself as a foreign word.
Europe is multilingual (Score:3)
In which of the European Union's 24 official languages at last count [europa.eu] should a name for something discovered in Europe be meaningful? I think they choose Greek because it's the oldest European civilization to have become literate, with whose history Europeans speaking one of the other 23 languages are expected to be familiar.
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They chose Greek because along with Latin it was what scholars used until fairly recently.
One advantage is that it enables them to more precisely & specifically name new things, e.g. television and telescope are different but are both literally "far seers".
The other is that it keeps the oiks in their place.
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Relax. 99% of new element names are $town+ium. Even $researcher_name+ium fell out of use.
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Only if one is found to be a room temperature superconductor; even for a few ms.
Re:god no (Score:5, Interesting)
We associated the idea of descriptive names with other cultures, and do not call our daughters things like "cloud-flower" (although we do use Fern, Ivy, April, etc).
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We associated the idea of descriptive names with other cultures, and do not call our daughters things like "cloud-flower" (although we do use Fern, Ivy, April, etc).
I have a sister-in-law whose name means "first leaf". She was so named because she was born in the spring. I had a scout master whose name means "big mouth" because he cried a lot as a newborn. My sister's friend has a name which means "peace" because of her disposition as a newborn. Just because in the US we rarely use descriptive names doesn't mean they are out of fashion elsewhere.
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So we should call them all "gonein60seconds"?
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Re:Slashdotium (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, it decays into lower elements like Redditium. One of the forms this happens is the so called slashdot beta decay.
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Wow, reading into things much?
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They were going to name the first one 'vaccium', but there was concern that liberals would reflexively protest against it on the assumption that it had something to do with antibodies.
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Why do we need names, beyond calling them element-n, it makes learning simpler.
Because "Element 26-Man" just doesn't have that ring to it.
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Memorizing a list of properties by number is just as hard as memorizing a list of properties by name. :D
I'd say we have to make the names descriptive of an elements property.
E.g. Gold would be: 'YellowyExpensium', Oxygen: 'BreathGasium' or what about 'FunnyVoicium' for Helium?
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But what would Gaspodium be? The Alchemists Guild wants to know!
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If anything gets named after the Alchemists Guild, it'd be something more volatile than FOOF, and it'd be called Explodium or Disintegratium...
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But what would Gaspodium be? The Alchemists Guild wants to know!
Gaspodium? I think that's what she said.
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Let the Internet decide to name the newly discovered elements. Like we did Boaty McBoatface.
Indeed. What could possibly go wrong.
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Vaderium
Lukium
Reynium