mikes@tekecs.UUCP (Michael Sellers) (04/14/86)
*** EPLACE-RAY IS-THAY INE-LAY ITH-WAY OUR-YAY ESSAGE-MAY ***
(if-yay ou-yay ink-thay is-thay is-yay ard-hay o-tay ead-ray, ou-yay ould-shay
y-tray itting-wray is-thay a-way :-)
My chem prof told our class (a couple of years ago) that the international
phsyicists union (the counterpart of IUPAC) had voted to do away with the
traditional names for all the elements. A dispute had arisen over who (US or
USSR) had synthesized a new element first (number 104 or 106 I think). The
Americans wanted to call it Neilsbohrium and the Soviets wanted to call it
Thisisourelementskium (or something :-). As a result, the union voted to
henceforth call all elements by the *latinization of their atomic number*!
Like hydrogen = unium, helium = binium, etc. They realized that it could
take as long as 20 years to change all the textbooks, but decided it was worth
it to head off any more Gallium, Germanium, Californium, or Einsteinium
discoveries.
The great part about this, though, was that the chemists heard about it and
decided that they had better change over too, so as not to be out of step.
Many of the members viewed this as a large crock o' fertilizer (to say the
least), so there was a lot of dissension. Now, in the IUPAC (Int'l Union of
Physical and Applied Chemistry) votes are given representationally to each
delegation by population of chemists per country. Naturally the Chinese have
the most votes. So when it came down to it, the Chinese gave the rest of the
union an ultimatum. They basically said that if the Union went with the new
names of the elements that they would push through a resolution making the
new, international language of chemistry not English but *Chinese*! Needless
to say, chemists still fool around with hydrogen and helium, not unium and
binium.
Mike Sellers
{..}!tektronix!tekecs!mikes
Two appropriate quotes:
"Ni hou ma, ni hou ma, ni hou ma tsai-tsien..."
-- monty python
"All that glitters is not septononinium"
-- a disgruntled physicistmikes@tekecs.UUCP (Michael Sellers) (04/14/86)
Sorry, I *did* say *2* anecdotes, didn't I? The second one involves your friend and mine, plutonium. This I was told by a psychologist friend of my dad's, who was at the U. of Illinois (or wherever; in Chicago) when the first atomic pile was built. Its been a few years since I heard this, so its a little vague... It seems the janitorial staff had been told time and again that the area around the court (where the pile was) had to be kept scrupulously clean. So, one night when cleaning up, this janitor noticed a beaker filled with a blue-gray sludge sitting on a bench. "Yuck", he said. So, being cleanliness-minded, he promptly poured the gunk down the drain... Next day, the staff comes in, and pretty quickly notices the empty beaker. They figured out what had happened after a while, and then figured out that they were going to have to get the stuff back out of the water system (of *Chicago*!). It fell to one of the more senior staff members (don't remember who, but it wasn't Fermi) to call the President (FDR?) and tell him what had happened. The first words out of the President's mouth were "Well I'll be damned." It turned out that the sludge had kept pretty much together in the pipes, and they found it lodged with some leaves from the storm drains a few hundred yards outside the stadium. But just think if it had gotten further... As it was, I was told, there was some awfully fast talking done at the University as to why they were going around with geiger counters pointing at the ground. I can't confirm this, but the guy who told me *was* there... Mike Sellers "It could be worse...it could be raining" <Sudden roar of thunder>
mrl@oddjob.UUCP (Scott R. Anderson) (04/19/86)
In article <7205@tekecs.UUCP> mikes@tekecs.UUCP (Michael Sellers) writes: >This I was told by a psychologist friend of my dad's, who was at the >U. of Illinois (or wherever; in Chicago) when the first atomic pile >was built... >One night when cleaning up, this janitor noticed a beaker filled with >a blue-gray sludge sitting on a bench. "Yuck", he said. So, being >cleanliness-minded, he promptly poured the gunk down the drain... >It turned out that the sludge had kept pretty much together in the pipes, and >they found it lodged with some leaves from the storm drains a few hundred >yards outside the stadium. I heard a rumor that the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction occurred at the University of Chicago... right across the street from the very building I am sitting in (about 100 yds., in fact :-). A couple of years back, the interiors of several buildings on campus were replaced because they contained unacceptably high levels of radiation, left-over traces of materials used in the Manhattan Project. The reason it took so long is because the acceptable maximum was recently lowered below the measured levels. They didn't say anything about replacing the sewers, though :-). -- Scott Anderson ihnp4!oddjob!kaos!sra
knudsen@ihwpt.UUCP (mike knudsen) (04/21/86)
> > My chem prof told our class (a couple of years ago) that the international > phsyicists union (the counterpart of IUPAC) had voted to do away with the > traditional names for all the elements. > > Mike Sellers > {..}!tektronix!tekecs!mikes > Unfortunately, electronic logic designers are still struggling against some conspiracy to replace our easy-to-read symbols for OR, AND, NOR, NAND etc. gates with square boxes with little characters in them. You may have seen them; they also substitute bird-beaks for little balls to negate the signal. These symbols even made it into the hallowed pages of QST magazine for a few months. SOme of the new Texas Instruments catalogs use these, some don't; I carefully mark which ones use the "UGLY" (Unreadable Gratuitous Logic Yuck) symbols and leave them alone. mike k