h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: The Elements: Names and Origins - A2293535
Author: Hell - U171578

OK...

This is a big one. But on the other hand it's just a list with a little info one every element's 'ethymology' (except above 104). Also, I don't know how to sensibly separate the Entry into smaller chops (Suggestions?).

Anyways, the data gathered in this Entry has been thoroughly researched and double checked with all my chemistry books. The versions sometimes didn't match, or sometimes the one or the other text did not go deep 'enough'.

Later,

HELL

My kind of entry is this, so I hope we can get it into shape for the EG. I haven't read it all yet, because it gets a little confusing. Does it cover elements up to 115, or only up to 104? (It makes statements in respect of both numbers, which are mutually contradictory.)

I'll post again when I have read it completely.

I thought Xenon was a TV warrior princess?!

You could break it down to smaller pieces by metals, noble gases, etc.; but I wouldn't favour that approach because some of them are transitional.

[Didn't Fragilis recently post a table of elements?]

This has their etymology, so I like it.

I noticed that you left out Frankensteinium and his monsterum.

In no particular order:

some spelling errors

shorthanhd->shorthand
transsylvania->Transylvania
homolg->homolog (?perhaps-I am not sure what is meant here)
Plutonim->Plutonium



What is vegetal material?

Why not Platinium instead of Platinum?



I think of the first thermonuclear explosion as happening at Trinity/White Sands, before Bock's Car and Enola Gay did their horrible work in WWII. Perhaps a short explanation as to why you are naming your particular explosion 'the first', where it was, and why these elements weren't found in places of prior nuclear explosions could be added.



There is a grammatical peculiarity sprinkled througout your entry in which you use the auxiliary verbs 'has been' (with 'isolated', 'identified', etc.). This doesn't read right to me as it makes the procedure seem like it is ongoing or has just recently happened. Since all elements that you choose to comment on were discovered long before now, you can easily use the word 'was' instead.



As a Californian, I don't find the origins of the name all that obscure, and it certainly isn't compellingly longer or absurd than many other element's entries.



Finally, since the English names for some of these elements is wildly at odds with the international names, why not order them by proton number, which is unambiguous?

I doubt many language to language dictionaries have the more obscure names, and automated searches based on the two-letter designation are likely drowned by lots of false finds.



I don't see the need to chop the entry, but there are official (vertical on the periodic table) groups of elements. This would lead to natural divisions of the article, and there's no particular need to have only one Group per Entry. Some sections would be short, but there's nothing inherently wrong with a concise pithy article as an Edited Entry.

Hello.

OH: I thought it was clear in the Entry what Elements are dealt with. I write: "The list in this Entry covers the elements 1 (hydrogen) through 103 (lawrencium). The elements from 104 onward will be omitted because..."

FT: Order. Being a chemist, I obviously thought about ordering the elements in a chemical way. But if you're not a chemist, and want to know something about the origin of the name 'gadolinium' you would have to know it's atomic number. For 'us' chemists it is easier to adapt to an alphabetical order. For 'them' non-chemists it is more difficult to adapt to a 'chemical' order, so... It would not be too difficult to put them in a different order, though. Let's see what the others say...

SC: Typos & comments - thanks! More specifically:


vegetal material: stuff comming from vegetals, like wood, leaves, roots.

Platinium: Good question. (IF I find an answer, it'll get in.)


thermonuclear: FUSION (Like in the sun, the H-bomb) 1952
nuclear: FISSION (Uranium, Trinity, Hiroshima) 1944


California: Where *does* the name California come from? It is clear that californium was named after the state of California - as you said - there's nothing particularly weird about that. The origin of the name of the state, however, is what I found to be obscure. If you know it, I would be glad to hear.


Ordering by atomic number: cf. reply to FT.


I don't understand what you mean:"I doubt many language to language dictionaries have the more obscure names, and automated searches based on the two-letter designation are likely drowned by lots of false finds."


Ordering by groups: Thanks - I have done the periodic table Entry - but (for the same reasons as above) I don't think that any chemical subdivision would make sense.

Anyways, thanks all for reading and for your comments.

HELL

I enjoyed reading this and learned a few things.

The one comment is that I would not have done the list alphabetically, but would have done it grouped by category. That way you could have saved some space on the newer, perhaps less interesting elements. I wouldn't split the entry up though.

sprout

Are "LINK A" tags official GuideML?

If so, the elements could be listed more on the top of the Entry (by date of identification, for example, or by atomic number) and linked to the list on the lower part of the Entry...

Wait a minute. I just had another idea... (It will take some time, but please just wait and be patient) In the meantime, don't worry about the ordering, and please just comment on the contents.

I'll be back with something more digestible in a couple of days.

Cheerio!

HELL

Well, I reckon they are if you use them only to provide place marks within an entry - otherwise the entry 'Self-reference' which is always on the front page lately could not have been made. Glossary type entries are also unwieldy withiout this technique, but it would be nice to receive some official blessing.

I like this entry a lot, and I reckon that alphabetical is the way to order it. Non-chemists like myself can do alphabetical, so can chemists. Chemists can do all the other types of ordering sugested, non-chemists can't. If anyone wants to know about the elemental categories, take a look at the periodic table


Scout

What about this kind of solution... A703036
It's not perfect, I know, but it works.
I also don't know how to get rid of all the links in the box.
Any better suggestions?

Oh and thanks, Gosho, for your comments!

See? That's exactly the reason why I think alphabetic order makes sense...

Anyhow... Time to go home...

HELL

What I was talking about that you didn't understand speaks directly to the non-chemist vs. chemist thing.

Almost all browsers have a search-this-webpage function. A native english speaker, whether a chemist or not, can find any element by typing the name in. Your article is sufficiently long that we can suppose few casual readers will read it with the specific intention to read it in it's entirety. A nonnative english speaker is at the mercy of her dictionary, which may not have the more obscure names in, or which might have transliterations of French or German names.

Because your article has subscripts before the two letter chemical designations (ie 2He instead of 2 He) it's possible that a browser search won't find this. It's possible someone who doesn't know the precise English name for a chemical (say, she knows Tungsten as Wolfram) might do a search with that abbreviation, or just look at a list in her own language or the periodic table.

This is why number order seems more advantageous than alphabetic to me.

I typed first and followed your link later. This organization works for me, and it's a neat idea, to boot.

I don't think I am the only one who doesn't have a strong sense of the distinction between nuclear and thermonuclear explosions. Perhaps a small note could be added on your first element that mentions this, so the reader can understand that fusion (that just so happened to be uncontrolled, or wild) was required to get the first instances of these elements.



The first Spanish explorers of California asked the native Gabrielen~os 'who lives to the north of here', here being where they were currently exploring in [what is now] Baja California They were told of an amazon tribe of dark skinned indians[aboriginal] lead by their Queen, Califia. Since the Gabrielen~os were rather dark, you can imagine these califian amazonas were supposed to be quite dark, indeed. The Spanish took this seriously, so that is what the region, and later the new state was named.

I grew up in the third largest city of California, San Jose, which in real life has a history of feminism and whose mayor and 5 of 7 councillors were women for many years, so this doesn't seem *too* far fetched to me.

You can see Whoopi Goldberg morph into Queen Califia at Disney's California Adventure theme park.

Hmmm... this makes sense, SC.

But I am not entirely sure yet, y'know - Suppose I go ahead and make the changes (not a lot but enough work) and then someone else points out, in a sensible way, why he prefers the alphabetical order.

I guess that this will be the last thing I am going to do with the Entry...

HELL

Sorry, the reply above is for your first post.

Thanks for the info on California! (Sounds absolutely plausible)
I'll get a footnote on thermonuclear. (Good point!)

HELL

Your reply to me in posting 5 says, in effect, don't understand the problem.

Just before you you talk about excluding certain elements is the sentence 'The list of elements is complete from elements with 1 proton to 115 protons.', which is the list of elements known to man, not the list of elements given in the entry. The reader can fathom out what you mean, but may, like me, trip over this at a first reading. Perhaps it would be better to say 'The list of elements now known is complete from elements with 1 proton to 115 protons.'

It is a minor point, which you may, if you wish, ignore entirely - but I am keen that you understand what I was getting at.

I have two comments, Hell (well, three actually, if you count agreeing that alphabetical order makes sense).

I would suggest emboldening the names of the elements for easier reading and suggest a link to the entry on Tom Lehrer A907517 as it mentions (and has an extract from) his song 'The Elements' set to the tune of 'The Pirates of Penzance'.

OH: got it!

ZSF: Hi - Thanks. Will do!

HELL

Changes done. Included bit on Califia (thanks SC!). Changed sentence in intro according to OH's suggestion. Put Terbium, Yttrium and Ytterbium at the right positions of the list. The names in bold look a lot better, thanks ZSF!

Thanks all.

HELL

As someone who hasn't studied chemistry for many years, I'd appreciate a defintion (maybe as a footnote) of the term 'element' - maybe contrasting it with the term 'compound' ???

Alphabetical order gets my vote

<phobia>
The use of the term 'nomenclature' seems excessive to me - especailly when (in my opinion) the term 'name' would suffice in many instances
</phobia>

67s: Definition of Element is already in there. Also mentioned that it changed with time.

Here, 6th paragraph:

"The elements were not identified within a few decades. The process started with the ancient civilizations (Persians, Egyptians, Romans, Greeks and pre-Columbian Indians) who themselves had different names for the same element and had different ideas for what constituted an element (water and fire for example were considered as elements). In the 17th Century, the most convincing definition for an element was that it should be homogenous in its properties and not be divisible into even more fundamental elements. This definition was the one used until quite recently, say, the end of the 19th Century. The modern definition is based on the atomic model. An element is 'matter, all of whose atoms are alike in having the same positive charge on the nucleus.'"

Thanks for your comments.

As to 'nomenclature'. There is, IMO, a slight difference between a 'name' and 'nomenclature' - The term 'nomenclature' invokes, to me, the notion of a comittee or a board discussing about chosing between different 'names' - one of which is official 'nomenclature'. But that might be just me.

HELL

PS: Thanks for voting.