We avoided a transatlantic bust-up by neglecting to mention aluminium/aluminum. We’ll cover it in another episode. In the meantime, we’ve both agreed to call it alumium, which was also an acceptable name at one point. #compromise
I was surprised to not hear this element (along with sodium, silicon, and lithium I believe were missed). On Al... YES! Originally named "alumium" - great compromise! The story (which could be BS, so I look forward to Rob and Jess who do proper research - unlike me) is the scientist who isolated the metal from alum (some sort of chemical using in dyes I think), named it "alumium" (your compromise) but got persuaded to change it when apparently nobody liked that name. So he changed it to "aluminum" but later decided on "aluminium" because his scientist buddies preferred that, with them citing how many elements end in "ium". I think BS to that statement because several elements end in just "um" (without the "i") most famously "platinum". Although "platinium" sounds a fun way to say it.
Every time I see that you've released a new episode, I’m filled with joy and excitement. In Norwegian, we have an expression 'radarpar,' which describes two people who work together so seamlessly and complement each other perfectly. You genuinely show interest, passion, and enthusiasm, and you elevate each other in a wonderful way.
@@HotelPapa100 "Radarpar" is a Norwegian term that describes two individuals who work together so well that their collaboration feels effortless and natural. While the exact origins of the expression aren’t fully known, it likely draws inspiration from the way a radar system relies on multiple components working in harmony to achieve its purpose. Similarly, a "radarpar" refers to a duo whose skills and abilities complement each other perfectly. This expression can apply to all kinds of partnerships. It might be used for two athletes whose teamwork makes them unbeatable, two comedians or actors whose chemistry brings out the best in their performances, or two program hosts who create engaging and seamless content together. It can also describe two colleagues in a business setting who work together so efficiently that they significantly enhance each other's output. Essentially, "radarpar" captures the essence of a perfect partnership, where both individuals elevate one another and create something greater together than they could on their own.
@@HotelPapa100 Neither. Literally it means "radar pair", with "radar" according to NAOB being "a joking hint that the pair are so coordinated that it seems controlled by such a device".
'radarpar' ! Love it! Now I am wanting the word for two people who are always tripping over each other and can't accomplish anything together to be "rapradar"
You mentioned Mendeleev, but didn't seem to be aware of his significance. He was a chemist responsible for a number of contributions, but is most known for being the first to recognize the periodicity of the elements and proposing that they could be arranged in a table that reflected that periodicity, the periodic table! I have so enjoyed everyone of your collaborations, Thank you!
I love this episode. I must share the fact that, as a physicist working as a material scientist, I always name my dogs after elements of the periodic table. The first pair of puppies to join our family were named Cobalt and Nickel - linking the legend of mischievous pixies in the mine to our family name: Miner. They were followed by Zinc and Molybdenum (Molly for short). Niobium and Xenon are the current pair who are snoozing at my feet as I type this.
Tbis made me smile. My mum used to name her dogs after Highwaymen, Swiftnick and Terpin. My brother in law names his pets after TV deceives, Quincy the dog, Morss the goldfish and Jesica fletcher the cat
Speaking of iron.... a friend once showed me a picture of a bunch of iron symbols linked in a large circular ring. I didn't recognize it, so she told me,,,,, it's a ferrous wheel. :-)
I always enjoy your videos. I never knew oxygen had a different name. Here is a fact about oxygen; in Vietnamese it’s called dưỡng khí from a Chinese loanword 氧氣 which means nourish/fostering gas. Oxygen foster life so it is suitable name.
as a lover of chemistry and having chinese as my mother tongue, i've always wanted to learn the periodic table in chinese... but it's really really difficult, because almost NONE of the names bear any resemblance to the english ones at all... plus, a ton of them have their own unique logographs which means it's hard to write or even guess their pinyins sometimes. maybe there's a youtube video for this somewhere...
@@alveolate As someone who had to learn the entire table while studying for the HSK, I can reassure you a bit; many of the names are very closely tied to the beginning of the English names. So many of the metals, for example, just use 金字旁 followed by a phonetic element, so that Indium becomes 铟, iridium becomes 铱, barium becomes 钡, while palladium becomes 钯. Obviously, there are some slight pronunciation shifts there, with the "a" in barium moving to an "ei" or the "pa" in "palladium" shifting to "ba." However, a huge number of the names are phonetic in origin. In the case of sodium, the Mandarin and Latin match up: 鈉. Learning the 繁体字 isn't much different....just more strokes. Most of the gases work the same, with the 气字头 marking them. The original poster pointed out 氧 for oxygen. Neon becomes 氖 and krypton becomes 氪. Now, since I was studying alongside foreigners from a few countries, some silly puns did arise. Dumb jokes like "Did you know helium wasn't found for centuries because it's up so 氦?" The older elements are a bit harder to learn, so things like 硅, 汞, and 溴 can take some work. Memorizing how to write the 简体字 for each took me about a week, and the 繁体字 took another two weeks or so...but that was largely because I'd ignored 繁体字 for a few months.
Did you really think we care how long your episodes are? Never fear, we will watch all the way through (especially since we have the ability to pause and restart.) Love all you both do. While wearing my Word Nerd shirt.
I am a high school chemistry teacher who also loves history and linguistics, I teach these little nuggets to my students, whenever I can because it really enriches our understanding of the sciences as more than just memorizing facts on a test.
I needed a teacher like you when I was in secondary/high school. I liked every subject but English was my favourite and there just weren’t enough stories being told in other classes. Rob’s “words we don’t have in English” and the etymological stories around those, would have pricked my ears in German class where I felt I was just learning synonyms with different grammar rules. History was my second favourite, but I bored of learning dates and wanted more about the characters. As for science and maths, well, no scope for story telling there at all, it’s just diagrams and symbols. Not dissing my teachers though. They had to satisfy the UK National Curriculum rules of the 1970s. More than one said “I have to teach you this”, and I have the feeling now they’d rather play a more inspirational role with nuggets that inspire them.
I think my favorite is thallium, which means "green shoot". Basically every element has a lot of spectral lines which show how the different elements absorb and emit light. Thallium has only one obvious line in its spectrum, and it is bright green.
29:22 Someone at my old office used to have a sign on his door which looked like a standard warning placard. It said, "WARNING...ARGON...Be Back Later". Still gives me a chuckle.
My Grandma was "Beryl" but it was pronounced "Burl" by her teachers in the 30'a. Poor girl. They mispronounced her last name too! Thanks you two! I think I've tuned in to every episode!
It's not mispronounciation, if that's how the accent or dialect pronounces it. For example, Dale is usually pronounced like day-ul, but some dialects say it like də-ul, which gets slurred into dell. Likewise, those people pronounce oil with a schwa, so it sounds like ole, and hail becomes hell. I expect the people saying Beryl like Burl were actually saying it like Bərl; again, turning the e into a schwa.
In Hebrew oxygen (chamtzan) means also something in the area of sourness generator; nitrogen (chankan) - suffocator; hydrogen (meiman) - water generator; carbon (pachman) - coal generator. In addition, like in french, the word for silver and money is the same (french argent, hebrew kessef). Thanks so much for all of your episodes. I watch them rigorously and enjoy every second. Love and admire you guys❤
Makes sense, since Hebrew is a revitalized language, and there were many scientists involved in its start. The first leader was a biochemist for example.
- whereas the Germans use geld. That's probably due to inflation. The English-speaking world is somewhat cheaper, with coppers (slang for pennies) and nickels.
That sounds like direct translations of the German words "Sauerstoff", "Stickstoff", "Wasserstoff". In Chinese, the words for silver and money are also the same.
Congrats to Rob for the good pronunciation of "Ytterby". Your Y-sound isn't 100 % accurate, but it's very close. Your attempt at 25:10 is nearly perfect.
The name Strontium actually derives from the Gaelic language as Strontian, the name of the lead-mining village in Argyll where it was first found, is an Anglicisation of the original Sròn an t-Sithein, which means ‘the point (promontory) of the fairy hill’.
It was thought that the reason fires become extinguished in an enclosed space is that the air becomes saturated with phlogiston and can't absorb any more. So, the idea was that "dephlogisticated air" is air that doesn't already contain any phlogiston, and therefore has maximum ability to absorb it.
So glad that the algorithm overlords suggested this to me. When i find out about word origins I feel I gain a little bit more understanding about the world and the development of our species. Its fascinating.
In Danish the names for Hydrogen and Oxygen are both releted to fire. Hydrogen is called Brint, which is derived from the old Danish word for "to burn": Brinne. Oxygen is called Ilt, which is derived from the Danish word for "fire": Ild I have always found it fascinatng that Hydrogen and Oxygen is one of the most flammable combinations of two elements, but when conbined into the same molecule they are capable of exstinguishing fire.
Actually Hydrogen and Oxygen are just the most common not the most energetic combustion combinations. Chlorine and Fluorine both make oxygen look like a joke when it comes to combustion. Chlorine Trifluoride and Pentafluoride take this further…
Worth mentioning is that hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen are also "Danish" words for the elements today. Brint, kvælstof and ilt are still being used, but they are not the preferred way of naming the elements in Danish going forward. E.g. teachers should actively try to avoid using them if possible. While Denmark is changing some of the names to suit the symbols a better, we can only hope that Na and Ka will get the same treatment in English. (Na)trium and (Ka)lium surely makes more sense :)
@@allangibson8494 I think you are confusing combinations with compounds. Hydrogen is the most inflammable free element, which when combined with another free element: Oxygen, is highly flammable. But when in a compound in form of water they can extinguish fire. Chlorine triflouride is not a free element but a highly reactive compound, which released oxygen when reacting with other compound such as water. I am not an expert on chemistry , but I am pretty sure that if there are no access to oxygen, either already in the surronding environment or created through the chemical reaction, there will be no fire. And am also pretty sure that no compound of chlorine and flouride can exstinguish fire. It si the fatc that Hydrogen and oxygen has that different properties depending on whether they are in combination or a compound.
What do you mean "demoted"? It was never a planet in the first place - they just wrongly assumed it was a planet (for around 70 years), because they didn't know about Eris, Haumea, Makemake, and all the other dwarf planets. :)
@@ChristomirRackov I get the argument, but in my opinion that's not correct. Prior to that conference there simply wasn't an actual definition of what a planet is. They proposed and voted through (though that is not without its own controversy) a definition, which Pluto doesn't meet. A vote was also held on whether Pluto despite this should still be considered a planet due to tradition, which did not pass. However, Pluto is not the first body to be considered a planet on discovery but later downgraded when we found too many other similar bodies in almost the same orbit - Ceres, between Mars and Jupiter was considered a planet until it was reclassified as the first in the new classification"Asteroid". It has now joined Pluto and the other larger Kuiper belt objects as a Dwarf planet.
As a chemist who woke up this morning thinking about how to set the periodic table to music, I really appreciated this episode. Looking forward to what comes after your much-deserved respite!
Already been done about 60 years ago by Tom Lehrer, to the tune of G&S patter song "I am the very order of a modern major general". Out of date now, of course. Ifyou google Tom Lehrer elements I'm sure you'll find recordings and lyrics.
"Herbium?" "No, this time you are allowed to drop the h." This also sounds like a good place to point to the Periodic Videos channel, on which professor Poliakoff visits and interviews Oganessian about his discoveries (not much chemistry knowledge required)
Another fun fact regarding beryllium: the German word „Brille“ - „glasses“ is derived from this mineral, as the old scholars in their cloisters used cut beryllium stones, which are transparent to magnify the letters of the books they were reading. And so the „Brille“ - magnifying glasses you put put before your eyes, was coined.
Amazing! I think of beryl as a gemstone, but I guess they could get crystals large enough to grind into lenses. It is beryllium aluminum silicate. Beryllium is toxic stuff, so the processing of these stones requires some care. Because I came from a physics background, I think of the stuff primarily as a component of neutron sources: if you combine it with various radioactive elements like plutonium, it produces a lot of neutrons. Needless to say handling this kind of thing requires even more care, because neutrons will mess you up. The one I actually saw was entombed in this sort of concrete cask the size of an oil drum.
You said that the W symbol for Tungsten was because it used to be called Wolframite. However, Wolframite is actually Tungsten Trioxide. The name of the element itself was just Wolfram.
Speaking of tungsten / wolfram, you've explained to me the etymology of the Swedish word 'ramsvart' (a magnifier in a "blacker than black" kind of way), which I now know to signify "as black as soot". The best thing with your videochats is that the listener is provided with answers to the kind of subconscious questions you don't even know you have.
I'm mildly disappointed you didn't cover boron. Our name just comes from the name for borax in different languages... but it was once called "tincal", and I figured hearing/saying that was a good shot at making Rob blush!
I took a summer one semester credit hour course "Chemical Periodicity" back in 1978. This information would have helped to round out the material. Thank you for correcting a faulted memory. I recalled that my physical chemistry professor, who was German, told me hydrogen was called Wasserstuck. Back when I repaired computers that were the size of side-by-side refrigerators, and one could actually replace discreet components, I recall replacing capacitors made with tantalum.
On Polonium... I've been told that - at the time - Poland didn't exist - being an occupied country effectively 'erased' - so calling it after her native land was a ... political ... statement.
Yeah Polish troops helped Napoleon after he promised them autonomy. So in the Congress of Vienna after Napoleons defeat, they were kinda punished for that move, and completely partisioned between Prussia (what would later become Germany, kind of) and Russia. After WWI Poland got reformed and then during WWII partitioned again between Hitler and Stalin, until Hitler invaded Russia, and therefore eastern Poland, anyway. After WWII it became a Soviet State under Russian control until independence in 1989.
@@AAaa-wu3el no? Eastern poland as in the eastern half of Poland as it existed before the war (like 2 years earlier). So poland as it existed between WWI and WW2, but the eastern part, since western poland was already occupied by Germany in 1939.
@@jaspermooren5883 Poland was occupying Ukrainian land, and Soviet Union freed that land in 1939. It's simple as that. Everybody in 1939 understood that. British and French declared war on Germany for invading Poland, not on USSR, because USSR was right in doing so. Do you understand or not, that Soviet Union made a right lawful move by deoccupying Ukrainian land from Poland?
@@AAaa-wu3el I don't know where you got this from. But I can't find anything about it other than some confirmed to be false Russian propaganda at the time that stated that was the intent. In the 19th and 20th century Poland has been in almost its entirety Polish, German (or Prussian), or Russian/USSR. To claim that the Soviet Union had a claim to 'liberate' (which they definitely didn't do btw, the USSR occupation was one of brutal oppression) eastern Poland as Ukrainian land is ahistorical at best, and to claim that that so-called rightful claim is the reason the British and French didn't attack the Russian for it is outright wrong. That was simple Realpolitik, the British and the French had no way of attacking Russia anyway, and declaring war on both Germany and Russia would force them into an alliance that didn't really exist at the time, since everyone at the time knew that the Molotov Ribbentrop pact was at best an alliance of opportunity, and almost certainly wouldn't last. It was literally just a non-aggression pact (with the secret partitioning of land attached, but the allies didn't know about that anyway). In fact the allies already had alliance talks with Stalin for months before WWII broke out, since it was long obvious what Hitlers intent was with the massive military build up that happened in years before the war and an eastern front would be hugely helpful to the allies (which in the end it was to the allies, it's not uncontroversial to state that the USSR effectively defeated Hitler). So it's just a military strategic blunder of epic proportions to declare war on the USSR at that moment in time and quite feasibly could have lost the allies the entire war if they had. It had absolutely nothing to do with this so-called claim. I mean all claims are bullshit anyway, it's what Russia uses now to declare war on Ukraine, it's why the middle east is a mess. We just have to deal with the way things are now and go forwards from there. The borders as they are now are the only rightful borders, that is what international law states for a very good reason. To state anything otherwise is to invite war. So unless you're talking about some 13th century claim or something, which is wholly irrelevant to any conversation basically anywhere after a century, I don't know of any substantial territorial holdings of Ukraine in what is now Poland. They didn't exist in the last 200 years at least.
In your discussion of Cobalt, and the warning of mine collapse, there was a similar legend in Cornish mining called "tommyknockers" who were subterranean goblins/sprites that caused mischief (stealing unattended food or tools), but also warned of impending mine collapses by knocking on the walls.
Reminds me of a years-ago controversy at work regarding antimony vs. antinomy. We had a software Switchboard (SB) that we called Antimony. Antimony is Sb while Antinomy is a contradiction like beauty and evil. We had fun batting that around for a while, because we were nerds.
Meitnerium. Is named after Lise Meitner, the only element named exclusively for a woman, since Curium is named after both husband and wife. Just wanted to mention I live twenty minutes from Russian and there is a large town right over the border, called Nikkel, because there is a huge nickel smelters there.
Lise Meitner had an interesting career. In the First World War she treated German soldiers by exposing their infected wounds to intense radiation - which sounds like a truly terrible idea but before antibiotics it was one of the few interventions that might save a life or limb. You may be wondering whether she ever met Marie Curie who was doing the same thing for France, but no, because Meitner was on the Eastern Front. A couple of decades later, her nephew Otto Hahn asked Meitner to analyse some puzzling experimental data, and as a results she discovered nuclear fission. This, I feel, is the standard of excellence all aunts should aspire to. But when the research was published, she wasn't listed as an author, and so ended up missing out on the Nobel prize. (In contrast, Pierre Curie had refused a Nobel because it wasn't shared with Marie. Just saying. #NotAllMenStealYourLifesWork) Lise had a strange and partly accidental vindication later. When the atomic age was in full swing, teams of researchers in Berkeley (USA) and Dubna (Russia) raced to unlock nuclear secrets, for purely scientific motives, of course. By tradition, the first discoverer could name a new element, but its existence had to be confirmed by a second group. This led to the rival institutions publishing tantalising but not completely conclusive evidence of ever-heavier elements and staking their claims with rival names. In recognition of Otto, element 105 was named hahnium - in America - but the Soviet alternative was nielsbohrium. Successive scientists of various allegiances went on to refer to it by either of these, or unnilpentium, or kurchatovium or joliotium. Eventually someone managed to hammer out an agreement and called it dubnium, so Otto Hahn lost out in the end. Meanwhile, researchers in Darmstadt (Germany) had discovered even heavier elements, including number 107 with the almost undisputed name of meitnerium. So that is why, when you look at a modern periodic table, you see Meitner but not Hahn.
@@tulliusexmisc2191 I knew the story of Lise (Liesl) Meitner,sadly she is only one of many women who failed to receive the scientific honour she deserved in her lifetime.
I think it would be worth mentioning how there are systematic IUPAC names for larger elements, as a placeholder, until they are given a proper name. The IUPAC manes are basically just rearing the digits of the number in some Greek/Latin short form, and adding -ium. Element number 125 is unbipentium, and the symbol is Ubp. Like number 117, Ts, Tennessine, used to be Uus, Ununseptium; until 2016
33:00 For me, the most distinctive thing about sulfur is that when you do burn it, the fire only shows up in the dark. Otherwise, it's a blood red puddle!
I loved that you guys mentioned 'atom' and its meaning of 'non divisible', because we actually use the positive counterpart of it: 'tome'. Isn't a tome the division in volumes of a bigger work? Now, I want a tome on the anatomy of an atom.
My background is in natural sciences and I have a strong interest in etymology, I can't believe I've never properly considered the etymology of the elements before! Great concept
I loved your conversation! Fun facts: italian students always laugh about one specific element, Strontium, because it is almost homophone with an Italian insult...😅
This video is lovely. The thing I love most about etymology is how it spreads and touches so many other things throughout the history and evolution of a word and idea. You guys have done a great job at emulating the feel of wandering through wikipedia, while still sticking to the overall subject. 10/10
Samarium is named after samarskite, which itself was named after Russian mining engineer Vassili Samarsky-Bykhovets. He was the first to have an element named after him. And what did he do to achieve this honour? He was the mining engineer who happened to approve sending a sample to German mineralogists. He wasn't even himself involved with the study of samarskite. But as reward for doing a bit of bureaucracy, he got himself on the periodic table for all time. (I first heard about this from a video by Oliver Lugg.) But he probably didn't ask for any of that, and I suppose it is fair that samarium, element very few people know, is named after someone very few people know.
About the noble gases and xenon, radon and krypton are known to react as well. My favourite compound has got to be tetraxenonogold(II), where a noble metal and gas form a complex 😮.
If a drinking game was based on every time Jess said the word "like" out of context, you'd have to call an ambulance. Yet another thoroughly enjoyable episode - superfluous likes notwithstanding.
Here is my list from robs video: 35 named after characteristics 15 named after people 31 named after places 21 named after minerals/materials 16 named after gods/planets/mythological. Some with a decent amount of overlap ofc. Til 60 its mostly process/gods/material. 95+ only places and people.
During the Manhattan Project, the Department of Energy used many code words for elements. Neptunium-237 was used to produce Plutonium-238 by neutron bombardment. That pair was given many pairs of names like Palm and Olive and the process to convert from one to other was named the Palmolive process, cycle and program. Similarly radioactive Lanthanum (radiolanthanum) was used to produce intensively radioactive targets that were formed into spheres and substituted for plutonium in test explosive assemblies that were exploded in Bayo canyon at Los Alamos. These were called RaLa, with the unusual capitolization.
25:35 Thule- makes sense there is a town in the northern reaches of western Greenland called Thule. It was since been renamed, forgoing it's European name for Greenlandic name 😊
In Germany the name Thule is sadly only known for its misuse by the Nazis. Their occult research organization was called Thule Verein. (Think of Wolfenstein or Hellboy, we are talking about the inspiration for those stories)
I stumbled onto these videos, love them! Binge watched a bunch..... got to one where they both mention they are married to other people! Im calling it now: they are going to some "words conference" where they will meet in person, eventually run away together, obviously soul mates. 😂
I don't know if this is how they came across helium or not, but a way that you can identify different elements is their spectral lines. Every element has its own unique collection of absorbtion/emission lines which can be used to identify them.
That is exactly how helium was first identified. If I read the Wikipedia article correctly, it was spotted by its emission spectrum during a solar eclipse.
@@heatherkuhn6559And wasn’t detected on earth until it was found as a contamination in natural gas. All helium on earth is a radioactive decay product from alpha particles that get captured. Radon is particularly a problem because it decays from a gas to a radioactive solid in your lungs…
"Do you know why potassium's symbol is K?" and literally the rest of the world outside English speaking world shouted "because the element is KALIUM, not potassium!" And same for Natrium (Na) instead of sodium. There's a band in Finland called Kuha. (Pike perch.) the period is important. They make, among others, songs about science (one of their albums is called For Science - Against Fiction in Finnish) and wordplays and they made a song about Flogiston. It's like a mockery of Flogiston as if they were a person, the title is "Katsokaa tätä häviäjää" or "look at this loser", since "hävitä" in Finnish means both "to lose" and "to disappear". But it still also tells the story of Flogiston's history in science and how it panned out. Very clever band, they solved fourth level differential equations on projector on their gig, with the audience. And released studio footage trying to create dark matter with a fan and a vacuum cleaner. It's crazy how big part of the table of the elements is just place names from Sweden. "The y in Ytterby is this weird germanic sound that is so common in other languages." Although Swedes make an extra effort to mock the Danish by pronouncing it like potato in mouth. Yet I'm upset that Mercury and Marie Curie don't have much in common (although it would be a fantastic foresight if her parents named her after an element). We also no longer got a separate mention of Rob getting utterly flushed red from wolf's cream. Is Americium pronounced with s or k? K would sound so much more at home (particularly since that's how I always hear latin sound like, but also because America is amerika, not amerisa). But I'll let linguistics people decide that. Oganesson was quite a mystery until you mentioned it's after a Russian scientist and after that it's like "oh that's the most obvious way to say it" even to the point of that unexpected o->a pronunciation thing that Russian has at times and other times doesn't. It also technically has "single s" and the "e" is the common "ye" sound (at least if you rely on the "Oganyesyan" founder name, which is also for some reason romanised as Oganessian). But I'm very happy that in Finnish people named it "animal science" instead of trying to come up with word challenges like zoology. One thing I've always been wondering though is the naming or categorising of literature. Like in Finnish we have this category "information literature" like sort of informative and educational books with scientific or similar contents. Like a book of dog breeds or about plants or something. And when I tried to research how to translate that into English, all I got was "non-fiction". Like I wouldn't necessarily put everything under "non-fiction" to "information literature". I feel like biographies are not quite that for example. So wait, are "paladins" from Pallas Athene, image of Pallas Athene, safe guards? It would make so much sense. Argon? Noble and lazy? Are gone definitely. Sulfur should've probably been named after rotten eggs though and pretty sure "carbon" means the hood of the vehicel, car bonnet. Bromine being the stenchy one also makes a lot of sense. Ever smell the bros? They just hang out in their gym clothes all day. Taking that jab as readying to go weightlifting and later in the day judo, basically being sweaty half the day myself. Interestingly enough I've found that linguistics and similar are about the most lax people about language. Not at all pedantic. Like watching Dr. Geoff Lindsey regularly embraces all forms of language evolution that regular people are very emotional about. I guess that's the difference of studying (and discovering) the language and speech over fighting for it. Anyway, I feel like today you two were completely in your element.
@@piotrnowakowski5385 Potassium is 'kalium' in Swedish, but potassium carbonate is called 'pottaska' in older Swedish, though it is of course cognate with the English word.
As both a science nerd and an etymology nerd, I find that this is perfect! P. S. Now I can't stop imagining Joseph Priestley saying 'dephlOooOgisticated air'.
About the potassium/kalium issue: both are actually Neo-Latin. The Romans knew nothing about the element, but two people discovered it around the same time. The German discoverer took the word alkali and latinized it to "kalium", while the English discoverer took the word potash and latinized it to "potassium". Similarly, both sodium and natrium are Neo-Latin, it's just a matter of which languages took which name.
I only just realized that the 4 alchemic elements actually represent the 4 states of matter... Earth = Solid Water = Liquid Air = Gas Fire = Plasma No idea why it took me so long to realize this...
Yes, when you give ancient thinkers a little credit for having intelligence, their different analysis often has a certain amount of insight to it. Here, by injecting our current meanlng of element into ancient thinking, they seem to use to have totally misunderstood. But, leaving aside the word choice, the point they could possibly be making goes in a different direction. These are the elemental states, elemental in the sense of "basic", that we recognize in the material world.
And there are seven states of matter commonly recognised now… In order of rising energy Bose-Einstein Condensate, Solid, Liquid, Gas, Plasma,Quark Gluon Plasma, Degenerate matter… (the last is technically a solid but millions of times denser than regular matter).
Loved the episode, hey a little bit on the goblin Kobalt, in the U.S. we have that superstition here back in the gold rush days they were called Tommyknockers before a cave-in.
Rob, you rightly said anatomy is a negating prefix + atom (+ -y of course), but didn't mention that atom itself is [Greek] a (not) + temnein (to cut) → atomos, so it's a double negative creating a positive. ;-)
I'm a chemist and I can tell you from personal experience that bromine gas does indeed smell! It has a sharp, irritating odour, similar to chlorine and iodine
@@blechtic I haven't noticed people on TV specifically smelling chemicals in a lab setting (maybe I'm not watching the right shows?), but I'm constantly telling first year university students not to do it. In the lab, we generally try to avoid smelling anything much. If you can smell one of the compounds, that's probably a good indication that your equipment isn't sealed properly, there's a problem with the ventilation, or your fumehood sash needs to be pulled down. The thing that drives me crazy on TV is how much companies market perfumes/air fresheners and various other unnecessary household products as "clean" when they're made out of the same chemicals we wouldn't handle in the lab without protective equipment. All that junk is just chemical pollution, and I wouldn't want to be breathing it in like the people in commercials do
@@blechtic Well, speaking as somebody who's accidentally had the chemicals waft towards him, that is a recipe for getting a nasty acid burn up your nose, or just being straight-up poisoned
@@boraxmacconachie7082 Yep. My high school chemistry teacher told us to rather waft the air on top of the test tube towards us and sniff carefully than to breathe in to smell at the open top. I get it may not be entirely safe but it's significantly better for a bunch of highschoolers. Next time you see a CSI type of thing or that sort of crude chemistry on TV or in a movie, watch them do it horribly wrong. I guess they're all missing a type of expert advisor. I just thought you might have noticed. Also, OT, I was a little miffed at how the Listerine 10 mouthwash has a sort of a creosote aroma. I have no idea how coal tar becomes "clean mint".
@@RaytheonTechnologies_Official Presumably some English cartographer who thought he knew Spanish OR a sneaky ploy by the Spaniards to disguise their supposed fortunate discovery
@@derekmills5394 I've always assumed it was from an Argentinean misunderstanding of English, but happy to be proven wrong. As a River Plate supporter, it's just a perplexing oddity to me.
@@RaytheonTechnologies_Official I have seen the river marked "River Plate" on some English-language maps (a National Geographic globe I once had, I think?) It does seem like a mistranslation, but it's an old one, I think. Edit: I looked it up--it turns out it's just a *really* old translation, from the 16th century when "plate" was often used in English as a term for precious metal!
I’d thought you would mention aluminum. That was its original name, but scientists at the time suggested aluminium, to follow the then current naming conventions, which American ignored!
This was quite entertaining and interesting. I just have a little comment to your description of the origin of the element letters for Wolfram. Tungsten is derived from Swedish "tung sten", which means heavy stone, not hard stone. It describes the high density of the element.
That was what I was thinking too, and then I realised that in Dutch we refer to it as Mendeliev's table in school...And that may be why The English speaking parts of the world forgot about him
If someone was to suggest, let’s spend about 50min discussing the names of elements, you might be forgiven for thinking that will be a bore. But you two managed to keep it entertaining and educational. All of the little wandering off into the science or related topics are great! I was surprised that aluminium didn’t come up. Probably for the best since it’s been done to death.
Ohh, thank you, you helped me realise why the word 'stannary' is related to tin here in Cornwall! A stannary was a region in Devon and Cornwall where tin was mined and worked, and an administrative division that managed the collection of tin coinage. Love a light bulb moment.
Has anyone already mentioned this? The "argyrum" in hydrargyrum is in fact Greek (argyrion), there is no letter y in Latin. The Latin word ist argentum. It's just a little "Latinised", theGreek ending - on replaced with the Latin- um. Thanks for your interesting content!
USA has tried to ban the word because it sounds like it shou!d mean its opposite. Flammable and inflammable are synonymous. I suppose tne root is "inflame."
Okay I already follow Jess on the ticky tocky, and I just watch videos from Rob for the first time today, so finding out there's a podcast... *mindblown*
Family name legends, makes me think of a workmate who's family swears they are related to Attila the Hun, who died in 453AD. He once brought in a photocopy of a drawing to show the family resemblance. A drawing from 50 years ago, of a man who died 1500 years ago. And also, it didn't even look like him.
😂. There are none so blind as those who will not see! Personally, I cannot see the attraction - why would someone think it so wonderful to be descended from Attila the Hun?!
I knew a car mechanic that was a (fairly distant) relative of the last King of Yugoslavia. Technically he would have been an Earl under Serbian nobility. But he was (is?) happy to be a car mechanic in Rotherham!
Actually chances are quite high that your workmate is a descendant of Attila the Hun. Yet, the chances are just as high for you and me (supposing you are at least in part of European descent) to be his descendants. If you take today's population and go back far enough in history (~500 AD will probably be enough) and look at the population back then, there are exactly two groups of people: Those who don't have any descendants today, and those who are ancestors of *everyone* today (in a given region, say Europe). I wish it were different, but besides pillaging and mass murder rape has always been an integral part of warfare. (Just because it was "usual", I do not approve of it in any way. It was a crime back then, as it is today!) So, as horrible as it may be, the Huns (just like many invaders before and after) did not only reduce the local population, but also left their genetic footprints in the next generation. And the traces that Attila as the Hunnish king left are probably more significant than those of a common Hunnish soldier.
The Cobalt mining goblins remind me of Cornish knockers. They are like gnomes and they also warned miners of collapse by knocking. Hence the name knocker.
I'm sure you both know zoo is the greek word for animal, basically means "living", and it is pronounced with two separate "o"s. So the germans have the right idea.
6:07 To complete the previous two (Wasserstoff and Sauerstoff), nitrogen is Stickstoff in German (from "ersticken" meaning to smother or to suffocate, plus "Stoff" meaning stuff or substance, hence "the stuff that makes you suffocate").
You skipped californium and lawrencium, which form another geographic cluster with berkelium. All were discovered at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, which is managed by the University of California, Berkeley.
I was puzzled to see Rob speaking but couldn't hear anything. It was only when I turned up the volume that I realised what the element. I'll get my coat. Seriously, this was absolutely fascinating.
Meitnerium, you missed out on high drama. Lise Meitner was a physicist central to the discovery of nuclear fission. She was denied a Nobel largely because she was a woman of Jewish ancestry in Hitler's Germany. Her partner, Otto Hahn was given the Nobel, but denied an “element” name. The Nobel never corrected this error despite numerous petitions. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry committee chose instead to honor Lise Meitner.
as Tornbjørn wrote : "every time I see that you've released a new episode, I’m filled with joy and excitement." I can only agree, you are both shine - with a lovely positive attitude : and the bring the great knowledge you have, to us meer mortals !! (I don't know how to spell meer - is it correct ? I dammed, if I have to go Google translate, and translate what I mean from Danish - so meer it is ≈ "only" mortals).
As a student of Architecture, Palladium reminds me of Andrea Palladio, a very influential renaissance architect. His churches and villas are quite distinctive, drawing heavily from the proportions and symmetries of ancient greek classical art and architecture. Perhaps a fun intersection between architecture and etymology is "Palladium" possibly originating as a name for buildings not of a particular type (e.g. venue) but of a particular style (e.g. Palladian Classical Revival). Not sure of this though i think it warrants more research! Love this podcast :)
"Palladio" was not his original name - I believe he took the name "Palladio" from the name of an angel in an epic written by his patron Trissino. I'm originally from the area where Palladio came from - the Veneto region especially Vicenza.
When the first superheavy element in the island of stability is discovered, I suggest it be called "australium," after the great country and continent of Australia, which is a geologically stable continent.
The noble gasses used to be called "inert" gasses, because it was thought that they categorically never formed compounds at all. And then that turned out not to be entirely accurate. It is possible that the cypress trees may have been given their name, because they were a source of pitch (which numerous ancient near-eastern languages denote with similar words, along the lines of velar-labial-rhotic, e.g., K-F-R); but this is highly speculative, because phonetic writing, if it even existed yet at all when these things were named, would have been pretty new at the time, and consequently we do not have a large amount of surviving written evidence one way or another, regarding which thing is named for which other thing. So on the one hand it's possible that the metal was named for the island which was named for the trees that were named for the pitch; but on the other hand it's also possible that the trees are named for the island that's named for the metal, and the similarity to the word (in other languages) for pitch, may just be a coincidence, along the lines of English "pan" Spanish "pan" (bread, which is typically baked in a pan, but that's not why it's called "pan"). The English word "zoo" derives ultimately from the Greek word for life, ζωή, which is two syllables; the omega is what we in English would call a "long O", and the eta is a "long A" (like the E in many words of Latin origin). However, I've always pronounced it with the same OO sound as in "boo" and "goo", and "zoology" likewise. My favorite bit of element etymology trivia, is that "aluminum", "alumium", and "aluminium" were all coined by chemists working from alum and/or alumina, and doing that standard "let's make this sound like the name of an element by adding a suffix" thing, and they chose slightly different forms of the suffix. The really interesting bit is that "aluminum" was coined in Britain, "aluminium" in America, but then chemists on each side of the pond adopted the foreign word rather than the domestic one. Perhaps that says something about the scientific community in that era. The other really interesting thing about aluminum, is that it used to be very expensive, even though the ore has always been common, because the available refining processes were impractical to use on any kind of large scale, until the advent of high-temperature electrolysis. If HP and the Philosopher's Stone had been the _second_ book in the series, I think the title could have been used in the American market, because the "Harry Potter" part would've been enough to sell the book at that point; but since it was the first book in the series, the publisher was concerned that A) American children would not know enough about medieval alchemy to get the reference, and more importantly B) no book with any version of the word "philosophy" in it could be expected to sell well in the American market, because no academic subject is more stereotypically boring, than philosophy. Might as well call it "Harry Potter and the Tax Exemption". Which, again, once the series was established, I'm sure Harry Potter and the Tax Exemption would have sold just fine. But as the first book in the series, it's a risky title. Sorcerers, on the other hand, are inherently exciting to gradeschool children.
I remember, at school, we learned about inert gasses. There wasn't so many of them back in the 70's. Or maybe I wasn't too interested!! It took a few years before I found out that noble gasses are, in fact, what we called inert.
@@loisdungey3528 By the time I was in school in the eighties, we had the whole column down to radon. Oganesson, of course, had not yet been "discovered" (i.e., made in a particle accelerator in single-atom quantities); I think by the time I was in high school it was listed with its Latin-number name (ununoctium or whatever) as a purely theoretical element. That was also about the same time I started hearing the new term "noble gasses" instead of "inert gasses".
We avoided a transatlantic bust-up by neglecting to mention aluminium/aluminum. We’ll cover it in another episode. In the meantime, we’ve both agreed to call it alumium, which was also an acceptable name at one point. #compromise
I feel compelled to type the word platinium.
apologies.
@@that44rdv4rkor maybe sodium as sodum xD
Never read the comments 😂
I was surprised to not hear this element (along with sodium, silicon, and lithium I believe were missed).
On Al... YES! Originally named "alumium" - great compromise!
The story (which could be BS, so I look forward to Rob and Jess who do proper research - unlike me) is the scientist who isolated the metal from alum (some sort of chemical using in dyes I think), named it "alumium" (your compromise) but got persuaded to change it when apparently nobody liked that name. So he changed it to "aluminum" but later decided on "aluminium" because his scientist buddies preferred that, with them citing how many elements end in "ium".
I think BS to that statement because several elements end in just "um" (without the "i") most famously "platinum".
Although "platinium" sounds a fun way to say it.
I was actually waiting for you to discuss drama & controversy of this element. 😊
Every time I see that you've released a new episode, I’m filled with joy and excitement. In Norwegian, we have an expression 'radarpar,' which describes two people who work together so seamlessly and complement each other perfectly. You genuinely show interest, passion, and enthusiasm, and you elevate each other in a wonderful way.
Ist hat "pair of wheels" or "pair of cogs"?
@@HotelPapa100 "Radarpar" is a Norwegian term that describes two individuals who work together so well that their collaboration feels effortless and natural. While the exact origins of the expression aren’t fully known, it likely draws inspiration from the way a radar system relies on multiple components working in harmony to achieve its purpose. Similarly, a "radarpar" refers to a duo whose skills and abilities complement each other perfectly.
This expression can apply to all kinds of partnerships. It might be used for two athletes whose teamwork makes them unbeatable, two comedians or actors whose chemistry brings out the best in their performances, or two program hosts who create engaging and seamless content together. It can also describe two colleagues in a business setting who work together so efficiently that they significantly enhance each other's output. Essentially, "radarpar" captures the essence of a perfect partnership, where both individuals elevate one another and create something greater together than they could on their own.
@@HotelPapa100 Neither. Literally it means "radar pair", with "radar" according to NAOB being "a joking hint that the pair are so coordinated that it seems controlled by such a device".
'radarpar' ! Love it! Now I am wanting the word for two people who are always tripping over each other and can't accomplish anything together to be "rapradar"
@@martin3203 readarpar is also swedish. Does anyone know why swedes say Järngänget? Iron team
You mentioned Mendeleev, but didn't seem to be aware of his significance. He was a chemist responsible for a number of contributions, but is most known for being the first to recognize the periodicity of the elements and proposing that they could be arranged in a table that reflected that periodicity, the periodic table!
I have so enjoyed everyone of your collaborations, Thank you!
And, noticing there were gaps in the table, predicted the existence of a number of elements and their properties, which were later found to exist.
Yes, very strange. Certainly worth more than just a mention, though he did, at least, get that.
Came to say this, and also that he used that periodicity to predict some elements and their properties before they had yet been discovered!
Was about to say the same. Missed opportunity given his relevance to this subject.
This immediately jumped out to me! I can't expect them to go into detail about all 118 elements, but it does seem like a curious omission.
I love this episode. I must share the fact that, as a physicist working as a material scientist, I always name my dogs after elements of the periodic table. The first pair of puppies to join our family were named Cobalt and Nickel - linking the legend of mischievous pixies in the mine to our family name: Miner. They were followed by Zinc and Molybdenum (Molly for short). Niobium and Xenon are the current pair who are snoozing at my feet as I type this.
An astrpnomer friend of mine called her dog 'orion'. I was incredulous that she didn't call him 'Sirius' :-)
Tbis made me smile. My mum used to name her dogs after Highwaymen, Swiftnick and Terpin. My brother in law names his pets after TV deceives, Quincy the dog, Morss the goldfish and Jesica fletcher the cat
and then there is the aircraft controller who names his pups after some of the world's more prominent airports. Heathrow, Pearson...
@@IanKemp1960 We have a cat named Sirius (Black), but he was named this because of the character in the Harry Potter series.
My husband is a physicist. When I met him, he had two cats named after physicists, (James Clerk) Maxwell and (John Henry) Poynting.
Speaking of iron.... a friend once showed me a picture of a bunch of iron symbols linked in a large circular ring. I didn't recognize it, so she told me,,,,, it's a ferrous wheel. :-)
My dad has this on a t-shirt! 🤣 - Jess
Note that the Volvo logo is the symbol for iron, which stands for manliness and strength.
För stål eller.för Järn?
@@WordsUnravelled is this the same Ferris Wheel?
Like a/the Ferris Wheel?
The oxy- in oxygen comes from the Greek for “sharp”. Combine this with “moron” meaning dull or blunt, and you get oxymoron: sharp-blunt.
I always thought "oxymoron" was someone who didn't know how to use acne creme. (that joke dates me!)
🤣 What do you call a moron in an oxygen free environment?
Dead! 😆
Moron comes from the koine Greek moros meaning "fool"
Tungsten is more like heavy stone in Swedish which is quite apt, since tungsten is one of the elements with highest density.
And like gold can be separated by panning and gravity..,
Tung is basically Scandinavian for Heavy
I always enjoy your videos. I never knew oxygen had a different name. Here is a fact about oxygen; in Vietnamese it’s called dưỡng khí from a Chinese loanword 氧氣 which means nourish/fostering gas. Oxygen foster life so it is suitable name.
I like this one! Thank you for sharing! - Jess
as a lover of chemistry and having chinese as my mother tongue, i've always wanted to learn the periodic table in chinese... but it's really really difficult, because almost NONE of the names bear any resemblance to the english ones at all... plus, a ton of them have their own unique logographs which means it's hard to write or even guess their pinyins sometimes. maybe there's a youtube video for this somewhere...
Yeah oxygen is called zuurstof in Dutch, which is obviously derived from the German Sauerstoff.
But the "thingy" air one I've never heard of.
@@alveolate As someone who had to learn the entire table while studying for the HSK, I can reassure you a bit; many of the names are very closely tied to the beginning of the English names. So many of the metals, for example, just use 金字旁 followed by a phonetic element, so that Indium becomes 铟, iridium becomes 铱, barium becomes 钡, while palladium becomes 钯. Obviously, there are some slight pronunciation shifts there, with the "a" in barium moving to an "ei" or the "pa" in "palladium" shifting to "ba." However, a huge number of the names are phonetic in origin. In the case of sodium, the Mandarin and Latin match up: 鈉. Learning the 繁体字 isn't much different....just more strokes.
Most of the gases work the same, with the 气字头 marking them. The original poster pointed out 氧 for oxygen. Neon becomes 氖 and krypton becomes 氪. Now, since I was studying alongside foreigners from a few countries, some silly puns did arise. Dumb jokes like "Did you know helium wasn't found for centuries because it's up so 氦?"
The older elements are a bit harder to learn, so things like 硅, 汞, and 溴 can take some work. Memorizing how to write the 简体字 for each took me about a week, and the 繁体字 took another two weeks or so...but that was largely because I'd ignored 繁体字 for a few months.
Did you really think we care how long your episodes are? Never fear, we will watch all the way through (especially since we have the ability to pause and restart.) Love all you both do. While wearing my Word Nerd shirt.
I am a high school chemistry teacher who also loves history and linguistics, I teach these little nuggets to my students, whenever I can because it really enriches our understanding of the sciences as more than just memorizing facts on a test.
I needed a teacher like you when I was in secondary/high school. I liked every subject but English was my favourite and there just weren’t enough stories being told in other classes. Rob’s “words we don’t have in English” and the etymological stories around those, would have pricked my ears in German class where I felt I was just learning synonyms with different grammar rules. History was my second favourite, but I bored of learning dates and wanted more about the characters. As for science and maths, well, no scope for story telling there at all, it’s just diagrams and symbols.
Not dissing my teachers though. They had to satisfy the UK National Curriculum rules of the 1970s. More than one said “I have to teach you this”, and I have the feeling now they’d rather play a more inspirational role with nuggets that inspire them.
I think my favorite is thallium, which means "green shoot". Basically every element has a lot of spectral lines which show how the different elements absorb and emit light. Thallium has only one obvious line in its spectrum, and it is bright green.
The YT channel "Periodic Table", with Sir Martyn Poliakoff, did a fascinating episode explaining this.
@@SusanPearce_H I love Periodic Table. I think I watch every channel Brady is involved with.
It was also an early forensic test for a previously undetectable poison…
Thank you guys so much for indulging my word nerdiness!! This is what the internet is for😊
29:22 Someone at my old office used to have a sign on his door which looked like a standard warning placard.
It said, "WARNING...ARGON...Be Back Later".
Still gives me a chuckle.
My Grandma was "Beryl" but it was pronounced "Burl" by her teachers in the 30'a. Poor girl. They mispronounced her last name too! Thanks you two! I think I've tuned in to every episode!
It's not mispronounciation, if that's how the accent or dialect pronounces it. For example, Dale is usually pronounced like day-ul, but some dialects say it like də-ul, which gets slurred into dell. Likewise, those people pronounce oil with a schwa, so it sounds like ole, and hail becomes hell.
I expect the people saying Beryl like Burl were actually saying it like Bərl; again, turning the e into a schwa.
When I read your first sentence, I checked to see if we're related. (We don't seem to be.) Because my Grandma was also Beryl, pronounced Burl.
Was Grandma's last name Yves? Sorry.
I always thought they were pronounced the same but I say wash with an r in it @@litigioussociety4249
In Hebrew oxygen (chamtzan) means also something in the area of sourness generator; nitrogen (chankan) - suffocator; hydrogen (meiman) - water generator; carbon (pachman) - coal generator.
In addition, like in french, the word for silver and money is the same (french argent, hebrew kessef).
Thanks so much for all of your episodes. I watch them rigorously and enjoy every second. Love and admire you guys❤
Makes sense, since Hebrew is a revitalized language, and there were many scientists involved in its start. The first leader was a biochemist for example.
- whereas the Germans use geld. That's probably due to inflation. The English-speaking world is somewhat cheaper, with coppers (slang for pennies) and nickels.
That sounds like direct translations of the German words "Sauerstoff", "Stickstoff", "Wasserstoff". In Chinese, the words for silver and money are also the same.
Interestingly oxygen is Кислород in Russian which is also something related to sour.
Congrats to Rob for the good pronunciation of "Ytterby". Your Y-sound isn't 100 % accurate, but it's very close. Your attempt at 25:10 is nearly perfect.
After the first attempt he sounds like a native Stockholmer
Blame Rob living in Germany for how he pronounced the y 😉
Ohh! Chemistry AND Etymology! Great combo!
Indeed!
Surely the correct pronunciation is "zoo-logy" as in "after the crocodile died, they read a zoology over its grave."
and after the eulogy, it was a logy zoo
It's Zool-ogy, after the study of Zool the Almighty as depicted in Ghostbusters
The name Strontium actually derives from the Gaelic language as Strontian, the name of the lead-mining village in Argyll where it was first found, is an Anglicisation of the original Sròn an t-Sithein, which means ‘the point (promontory) of the fairy hill’.
Sròn [sdrɔːn] also means nose, snout or trunk, or the toe of a shoe in Scottish Gaelic.
In Dutch, "stront" means shit. You can imagine the classroom titters when the element "shittium" is first discussed...
Is it a small fairy hill or a big fairy hill? Si beag, si mhor?
It was thought that the reason fires become extinguished in an enclosed space is that the air becomes saturated with phlogiston and can't absorb any more. So, the idea was that "dephlogisticated air" is air that doesn't already contain any phlogiston, and therefore has maximum ability to absorb it.
That was nmy recollection also.
So glad that the algorithm overlords suggested this to me. When i find out about word origins I feel I gain a little bit more understanding about the world and the development of our species. Its fascinating.
In Danish the names for Hydrogen and Oxygen are both releted to fire.
Hydrogen is called Brint, which is derived from the old Danish word for "to burn": Brinne.
Oxygen is called Ilt, which is derived from the Danish word for "fire": Ild
I have always found it fascinatng that Hydrogen and Oxygen is one of the most flammable combinations of two elements, but when conbined into the same molecule they are capable of exstinguishing fire.
Also in Danish, Nitrolgen is "kvælstof" - which suffocates fires - as a translation of the German Stickstoff.
🇸🇪 In Swedish we say:
syre (oxygen)
väte (hydrogen)
Actually Hydrogen and Oxygen are just the most common not the most energetic combustion combinations. Chlorine and Fluorine both make oxygen look like a joke when it comes to combustion. Chlorine Trifluoride and Pentafluoride take this further…
Worth mentioning is that hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen are also "Danish" words for the elements today. Brint, kvælstof and ilt are still being used, but they are not the preferred way of naming the elements in Danish going forward. E.g. teachers should actively try to avoid using them if possible.
While Denmark is changing some of the names to suit the symbols a better, we can only hope that Na and Ka will get the same treatment in English. (Na)trium and (Ka)lium surely makes more sense :)
@@allangibson8494 I think you are confusing combinations with compounds. Hydrogen is the most inflammable free element, which when combined with another free element: Oxygen, is highly flammable. But when in a compound in form of water they can extinguish fire. Chlorine triflouride is not a free element but a highly reactive compound, which released oxygen when reacting with other compound such as water. I am not an expert on chemistry , but I am pretty sure that if there are no access to oxygen, either already in the surronding environment or created through the chemical reaction, there will be no fire. And am also pretty sure that no compound of chlorine and flouride can exstinguish fire. It si the fatc that Hydrogen and oxygen has that different properties depending on whether they are in combination or a compound.
At least plutonium didn't get demoted to a dwarf element.
What do you mean "demoted"? It was never a planet in the first place - they just wrongly assumed it was a planet (for around 70 years), because they didn't know about Eris, Haumea, Makemake, and all the other dwarf planets. :)
@@ChristomirRackov I get the argument, but in my opinion that's not correct. Prior to that conference there simply wasn't an actual definition of what a planet is. They proposed and voted through (though that is not without its own controversy) a definition, which Pluto doesn't meet. A vote was also held on whether Pluto despite this should still be considered a planet due to tradition, which did not pass.
However, Pluto is not the first body to be considered a planet on discovery but later downgraded when we found too many other similar bodies in almost the same orbit - Ceres, between Mars and Jupiter was considered a planet until it was reclassified as the first in the new classification"Asteroid". It has now joined Pluto and the other larger Kuiper belt objects as a Dwarf planet.
As a chemist who woke up this morning thinking about how to set the periodic table to music, I really appreciated this episode. Looking forward to what comes after your much-deserved respite!
Already been done about 60 years ago by Tom Lehrer, to the tune of G&S patter song "I am the very order of a modern major general". Out of date now, of course. Ifyou google Tom Lehrer elements I'm sure you'll find recordings and lyrics.
@@KR-ll4djIsn't it "I am the very model of a modern major general"? Alliteration!
@@KR-ll4dj Yes! Do it!
Mendelevium is named after Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev who invented the Periodic Table ...
"Herbium?" "No, this time you are allowed to drop the h."
This also sounds like a good place to point to the Periodic Videos channel, on which professor Poliakoff visits and interviews Oganessian about his discoveries (not much chemistry knowledge required)
Tungsten is ”heavy stone” in Swedish. Lub u
Vilket järngäng de måste ha varit i Ytterby. Var inte det häftigt att höra! 🇸🇪
43:04 - Mendeleev deserved special mention as the person credited with first organizing the elements into the periodic table.
Another fun fact regarding beryllium: the German word „Brille“ - „glasses“ is derived from this mineral, as the old scholars in their cloisters used cut beryllium stones, which are transparent to magnify the letters of the books they were reading. And so the „Brille“ - magnifying glasses you put put before your eyes, was coined.
Thank you - in Afrikaans (from Dutch) it is also Brille
In Dutch its called bril as well...
Closely linked
Amazing! I think of beryl as a gemstone, but I guess they could get crystals large enough to grind into lenses. It is beryllium aluminum silicate.
Beryllium is toxic stuff, so the processing of these stones requires some care.
Because I came from a physics background, I think of the stuff primarily as a component of neutron sources: if you combine it with various radioactive elements like plutonium, it produces a lot of neutrons. Needless to say handling this kind of thing requires even more care, because neutrons will mess you up. The one I actually saw was entombed in this sort of concrete cask the size of an oil drum.
I found this podcast a few days ago and I'm almost done adventuring through each existing episode. This is absolutely perfect for me :D
You said that the W symbol for Tungsten was because it used to be called Wolframite. However, Wolframite is actually Tungsten Trioxide. The name of the element itself was just Wolfram.
Speaking of tungsten / wolfram, you've explained to me the etymology of the Swedish word 'ramsvart' (a magnifier in a "blacker than black" kind of way), which I now know to signify "as black as soot". The best thing with your videochats is that the listener is provided with answers to the kind of subconscious questions you don't even know you have.
I'm mildly disappointed you didn't cover boron. Our name just comes from the name for borax in different languages... but it was once called "tincal", and I figured hearing/saying that was a good shot at making Rob blush!
I took a summer one semester credit hour course "Chemical Periodicity" back in 1978. This information would have helped to round out the material.
Thank you for correcting a faulted memory. I recalled that my physical chemistry professor, who was German, told me hydrogen was called Wasserstuck.
Back when I repaired computers that were the size of side-by-side refrigerators, and one could actually replace discreet components, I recall replacing capacitors made with tantalum.
tantalum is also used for implants because it bonds well with bone and the immune system doesn’t attack it …
43:05 - surprising that you didn't mention that Dmitri Mendeleev was one of the earliest formulators of the periodic table.
Sp - Surprisium.
On Polonium... I've been told that - at the time - Poland didn't exist - being an occupied country effectively 'erased' - so calling it after her native land was a ... political ... statement.
Yeah Polish troops helped Napoleon after he promised them autonomy. So in the Congress of Vienna after Napoleons defeat, they were kinda punished for that move, and completely partisioned between Prussia (what would later become Germany, kind of) and Russia. After WWI Poland got reformed and then during WWII partitioned again between Hitler and Stalin, until Hitler invaded Russia, and therefore eastern Poland, anyway. After WWII it became a Soviet State under Russian control until independence in 1989.
@@jaspermooren5883 Are you calling the Ukrainian land under Polish occupation "eastern Poland"?
@@AAaa-wu3el no? Eastern poland as in the eastern half of Poland as it existed before the war (like 2 years earlier). So poland as it existed between WWI and WW2, but the eastern part, since western poland was already occupied by Germany in 1939.
@@jaspermooren5883 Poland was occupying Ukrainian land, and Soviet Union freed that land in 1939. It's simple as that. Everybody in 1939 understood that. British and French declared war on Germany for invading Poland, not on USSR, because USSR was right in doing so. Do you understand or not, that Soviet Union made a right lawful move by deoccupying Ukrainian land from Poland?
@@AAaa-wu3el I don't know where you got this from. But I can't find anything about it other than some confirmed to be false Russian propaganda at the time that stated that was the intent. In the 19th and 20th century Poland has been in almost its entirety Polish, German (or Prussian), or Russian/USSR. To claim that the Soviet Union had a claim to 'liberate' (which they definitely didn't do btw, the USSR occupation was one of brutal oppression) eastern Poland as Ukrainian land is ahistorical at best, and to claim that that so-called rightful claim is the reason the British and French didn't attack the Russian for it is outright wrong. That was simple Realpolitik, the British and the French had no way of attacking Russia anyway, and declaring war on both Germany and Russia would force them into an alliance that didn't really exist at the time, since everyone at the time knew that the Molotov Ribbentrop pact was at best an alliance of opportunity, and almost certainly wouldn't last. It was literally just a non-aggression pact (with the secret partitioning of land attached, but the allies didn't know about that anyway). In fact the allies already had alliance talks with Stalin for months before WWII broke out, since it was long obvious what Hitlers intent was with the massive military build up that happened in years before the war and an eastern front would be hugely helpful to the allies (which in the end it was to the allies, it's not uncontroversial to state that the USSR effectively defeated Hitler). So it's just a military strategic blunder of epic proportions to declare war on the USSR at that moment in time and quite feasibly could have lost the allies the entire war if they had. It had absolutely nothing to do with this so-called claim. I mean all claims are bullshit anyway, it's what Russia uses now to declare war on Ukraine, it's why the middle east is a mess. We just have to deal with the way things are now and go forwards from there. The borders as they are now are the only rightful borders, that is what international law states for a very good reason. To state anything otherwise is to invite war. So unless you're talking about some 13th century claim or something, which is wholly irrelevant to any conversation basically anywhere after a century, I don't know of any substantial territorial holdings of Ukraine in what is now Poland. They didn't exist in the last 200 years at least.
Fascinating as always -- and how many have been added since I had to memorize the Periodic Table in HS sophomore Chemistry class in the 70's!
In your discussion of Cobalt, and the warning of mine collapse, there was a similar legend in Cornish mining called "tommyknockers" who were subterranean goblins/sprites that caused mischief (stealing unattended food or tools), but also warned of impending mine collapses by knocking on the walls.
Reminds me of a years-ago controversy at work regarding antimony vs. antinomy. We had a software Switchboard (SB) that we called Antimony. Antimony is Sb while Antinomy is a contradiction like beauty and evil. We had fun batting that around for a while, because we were nerds.
Meitnerium. Is named after Lise Meitner, the only element named exclusively for a woman, since Curium is named after both husband and wife. Just wanted to mention I live twenty minutes from Russian and there is a large town right over the border, called Nikkel, because there is a huge nickel smelters there.
As much imagination in naming as the Canadian "Uranium City".
Lise Meitner had an interesting career. In the First World War she treated German soldiers by exposing their infected wounds to intense radiation - which sounds like a truly terrible idea but before antibiotics it was one of the few interventions that might save a life or limb. You may be wondering whether she ever met Marie Curie who was doing the same thing for France, but no, because Meitner was on the Eastern Front.
A couple of decades later, her nephew Otto Hahn asked Meitner to analyse some puzzling experimental data, and as a results she discovered nuclear fission. This, I feel, is the standard of excellence all aunts should aspire to. But when the research was published, she wasn't listed as an author, and so ended up missing out on the Nobel prize. (In contrast, Pierre Curie had refused a Nobel because it wasn't shared with Marie. Just saying. #NotAllMenStealYourLifesWork)
Lise had a strange and partly accidental vindication later. When the atomic age was in full swing, teams of researchers in Berkeley (USA) and Dubna (Russia) raced to unlock nuclear secrets, for purely scientific motives, of course. By tradition, the first discoverer could name a new element, but its existence had to be confirmed by a second group. This led to the rival institutions publishing tantalising but not completely conclusive evidence of ever-heavier elements and staking their claims with rival names.
In recognition of Otto, element 105 was named hahnium - in America - but the Soviet alternative was nielsbohrium. Successive scientists of various allegiances went on to refer to it by either of these, or unnilpentium, or kurchatovium or joliotium. Eventually someone managed to hammer out an agreement and called it dubnium, so Otto Hahn lost out in the end.
Meanwhile, researchers in Darmstadt (Germany) had discovered even heavier elements, including number 107 with the almost undisputed name of meitnerium. So that is why, when you look at a modern periodic table, you see Meitner but not Hahn.
@@tulliusexmisc2191 I knew the story of Lise (Liesl) Meitner,sadly she is only one of many women who failed to receive the scientific honour she deserved in her lifetime.
@@joseraulcapablanca8564A number of them because Nobel prizes can only be awarded to living people - and they died before the discovery was honored…
I think it would be worth mentioning how there are systematic IUPAC names for larger elements, as a placeholder, until they are given a proper name.
The IUPAC manes are basically just rearing the digits of the number in some Greek/Latin short form, and adding -ium.
Element number 125 is unbipentium, and the symbol is Ubp.
Like number 117, Ts, Tennessine, used to be Uus, Ununseptium; until 2016
33:00 For me, the most distinctive thing about sulfur is that when you do burn it, the fire only shows up in the dark. Otherwise, it's a blood red puddle!
41:20 "Rhodon" also where we get the word Rhododendron "Rose" and "Tree" Dendron
And Rhodes, the island?
I loved that you guys mentioned 'atom' and its meaning of 'non divisible', because we actually use the positive counterpart of it: 'tome'. Isn't a tome the division in volumes of a bigger work? Now, I want a tome on the anatomy of an atom.
Tome is a knife used for cutting thin sheets…
a microtome is a knife for cutting samples to view through a microscope.
My background is in natural sciences and I have a strong interest in etymology, I can't believe I've never properly considered the etymology of the elements before! Great concept
I loved your conversation!
Fun facts: italian students always laugh about one specific element, Strontium, because it is almost homophone with an Italian insult...😅
same in Dutch. stront = shit.
In Dutch it’s also a bit strange, since in Dutch, stront means shit 🙂
@@EdwinMartin ahahha so funny, same original meaning in italian 😂😂😂
I only know it because Davie504 uses it all the time
@@turipgn1598 It was brought in by Lombards (a Germanic people) in what is now Northern Italy.
This video is lovely. The thing I love most about etymology is how it spreads and touches so many other things throughout the history and evolution of a word and idea.
You guys have done a great job at emulating the feel of wandering through wikipedia, while still sticking to the overall subject. 10/10
Samarium is named after samarskite, which itself was named after Russian mining engineer Vassili Samarsky-Bykhovets. He was the first to have an element named after him. And what did he do to achieve this honour? He was the mining engineer who happened to approve sending a sample to German mineralogists. He wasn't even himself involved with the study of samarskite. But as reward for doing a bit of bureaucracy, he got himself on the periodic table for all time. (I first heard about this from a video by Oliver Lugg.)
But he probably didn't ask for any of that, and I suppose it is fair that samarium, element very few people know, is named after someone very few people know.
You might say the naming decision was made by a good Samaritan?
I learn so much from you two. Love your channel, and how you two support and compliment each other.
About the noble gases and xenon, radon and krypton are known to react as well. My favourite compound has got to be tetraxenonogold(II), where a noble metal and gas form a complex 😮.
This is my new favourite podcast. I love the nerding out.
If a drinking game was based on every time Jess said the word "like" out of context, you'd have to call an ambulance.
Yet another thoroughly enjoyable episode - superfluous likes notwithstanding.
Here is my list from robs video:
35 named after characteristics
15 named after people
31 named after places
21 named after minerals/materials
16 named after gods/planets/mythological.
Some with a decent amount of overlap ofc. Til 60 its mostly process/gods/material. 95+ only places and people.
During the Manhattan Project, the Department of Energy used many code words for elements. Neptunium-237 was used to produce Plutonium-238 by neutron bombardment. That pair was given many pairs of names like Palm and Olive and the process to convert from one to other was named the Palmolive process, cycle and program.
Similarly radioactive Lanthanum (radiolanthanum) was used to produce intensively radioactive targets that were formed into spheres and substituted for plutonium in test explosive assemblies that were exploded in Bayo canyon at Los Alamos. These were called RaLa, with the unusual capitolization.
Genuinely this was the best video I’ve seen in ages. I would love for you to have included ALL elements and I wouldn’t have got bored xx
25:35 Thule- makes sense there is a town in the northern reaches of western Greenland called Thule. It was since been renamed, forgoing it's European name for Greenlandic name 😊
Qaanaaq in Greenlandic - one of the most northerly towns in the world.
In Germany the name Thule is sadly only known for its misuse by the Nazis. Their occult research organization was called Thule Verein. (Think of Wolfenstein or Hellboy, we are talking about the inspiration for those stories)
Goethe wrote a famous poem called 'Der König in Thule'. It was set to music in a well-known Lied by Schubert.
I stumbled onto these videos, love them! Binge watched a bunch..... got to one where they both mention they are married to other people! Im calling it now: they are going to some "words conference" where they will meet in person, eventually run away together, obviously soul mates. 😂
For these two it will be more like brief encounter
I don't know if this is how they came across helium or not, but a way that you can identify different elements is their spectral lines. Every element has its own unique collection of absorbtion/emission lines which can be used to identify them.
That is exactly how helium was first identified. If I read the Wikipedia article correctly, it was spotted by its emission spectrum during a solar eclipse.
@@heatherkuhn6559And wasn’t detected on earth until it was found as a contamination in natural gas. All helium on earth is a radioactive decay product from alpha particles that get captured.
Radon is particularly a problem because it decays from a gas to a radioactive solid in your lungs…
These episodes are getting progressively better and better, I love it 😁
"Do you know why potassium's symbol is K?" and literally the rest of the world outside English speaking world shouted "because the element is KALIUM, not potassium!" And same for Natrium (Na) instead of sodium.
There's a band in Finland called Kuha. (Pike perch.) the period is important. They make, among others, songs about science (one of their albums is called For Science - Against Fiction in Finnish) and wordplays and they made a song about Flogiston. It's like a mockery of Flogiston as if they were a person, the title is "Katsokaa tätä häviäjää" or "look at this loser", since "hävitä" in Finnish means both "to lose" and "to disappear". But it still also tells the story of Flogiston's history in science and how it panned out. Very clever band, they solved fourth level differential equations on projector on their gig, with the audience. And released studio footage trying to create dark matter with a fan and a vacuum cleaner.
It's crazy how big part of the table of the elements is just place names from Sweden. "The y in Ytterby is this weird germanic sound that is so common in other languages." Although Swedes make an extra effort to mock the Danish by pronouncing it like potato in mouth. Yet I'm upset that Mercury and Marie Curie don't have much in common (although it would be a fantastic foresight if her parents named her after an element). We also no longer got a separate mention of Rob getting utterly flushed red from wolf's cream.
Is Americium pronounced with s or k? K would sound so much more at home (particularly since that's how I always hear latin sound like, but also because America is amerika, not amerisa). But I'll let linguistics people decide that. Oganesson was quite a mystery until you mentioned it's after a Russian scientist and after that it's like "oh that's the most obvious way to say it" even to the point of that unexpected o->a pronunciation thing that Russian has at times and other times doesn't. It also technically has "single s" and the "e" is the common "ye" sound (at least if you rely on the "Oganyesyan" founder name, which is also for some reason romanised as Oganessian). But I'm very happy that in Finnish people named it "animal science" instead of trying to come up with word challenges like zoology. One thing I've always been wondering though is the naming or categorising of literature. Like in Finnish we have this category "information literature" like sort of informative and educational books with scientific or similar contents. Like a book of dog breeds or about plants or something. And when I tried to research how to translate that into English, all I got was "non-fiction". Like I wouldn't necessarily put everything under "non-fiction" to "information literature". I feel like biographies are not quite that for example.
So wait, are "paladins" from Pallas Athene, image of Pallas Athene, safe guards? It would make so much sense.
Argon? Noble and lazy? Are gone definitely. Sulfur should've probably been named after rotten eggs though and pretty sure "carbon" means the hood of the vehicel, car bonnet. Bromine being the stenchy one also makes a lot of sense. Ever smell the bros? They just hang out in their gym clothes all day. Taking that jab as readying to go weightlifting and later in the day judo, basically being sweaty half the day myself.
Interestingly enough I've found that linguistics and similar are about the most lax people about language. Not at all pedantic. Like watching Dr. Geoff Lindsey regularly embraces all forms of language evolution that regular people are very emotional about. I guess that's the difference of studying (and discovering) the language and speech over fighting for it.
Anyway, I feel like today you two were completely in your element.
Scheele and Berzelius were two of the greatest chemists ever.
I remember asking someone if they could tell me the symbol for potassium and they just said "K", confusing
For some reason when I see that O one, I think orgasmium. 😮. I have to read it.
Potassium is called "potas" in Polish so no, not the whole non English speaking world.
@@piotrnowakowski5385 Potassium is 'kalium' in Swedish, but potassium carbonate is called 'pottaska' in older Swedish, though it is of course cognate with the English word.
As both a science nerd and an etymology nerd, I find that this is perfect!
P. S. Now I can't stop imagining Joseph Priestley saying 'dephlOooOgisticated air'.
About the potassium/kalium issue: both are actually Neo-Latin. The Romans knew nothing about the element, but two people discovered it around the same time. The German discoverer took the word alkali and latinized it to "kalium", while the English discoverer took the word potash and latinized it to "potassium". Similarly, both sodium and natrium are Neo-Latin, it's just a matter of which languages took which name.
When in doubt it should always be the one most similar to the chemical symbol.
No reason to make it harder than necessary for pupils/students.
gosh, i could listen to you for hours, you guys are just awesome! ty as always for a great show!
I only just realized that the 4 alchemic elements actually represent the 4 states of matter...
Earth = Solid
Water = Liquid
Air = Gas
Fire = Plasma
No idea why it took me so long to realize this...
Yes, when you give ancient thinkers a little credit for having intelligence, their different analysis often has a certain amount of insight to it. Here, by injecting our current meanlng of element into ancient thinking, they seem to use to have totally misunderstood. But, leaving aside the word choice, the point they could possibly be making goes in a different direction. These are the elemental states, elemental in the sense of "basic", that we recognize in the material world.
And there are seven states of matter commonly recognised now…
In order of rising energy Bose-Einstein Condensate, Solid, Liquid, Gas, Plasma,Quark Gluon Plasma, Degenerate matter… (the last is technically a solid but millions of times denser than regular matter).
Loved the episode, hey a little bit on the goblin Kobalt, in the U.S. we have that superstition here back in the gold rush days they were called Tommyknockers before a cave-in.
This is from the Cornish knocker
Rob, you rightly said anatomy is a negating prefix + atom (+ -y of course), but didn't mention that atom itself is [Greek] a (not) + temnein (to cut) → atomos, so it's a double negative creating a positive. ;-)
The prefix ana in ana-tomy actually means up* (so cutting something into its parts), rather than being a double negative.
(Edit: Thanks, @lamudri)
@@screwaccountnames i thought anatomy meant study of the smallest?
@@screwaccountnames Ah, so it is. You learn something new every day.
@@screwaccountnames Or rather, “up”, with “cata-” meaning “down”.
@@lamudri Oops. Thank you, got my prefixes mixed up.
This episode was fascinating! Along the same science/etymology line, I’d love to see an episode about different rock and mineral words!
I'm a chemist and I can tell you from personal experience that bromine gas does indeed smell! It has a sharp, irritating odour, similar to chlorine and iodine
As a chemist, how much do you hate the way people smell chemical compounds in movies and TV?
@@blechtic I haven't noticed people on TV specifically smelling chemicals in a lab setting (maybe I'm not watching the right shows?), but I'm constantly telling first year university students not to do it. In the lab, we generally try to avoid smelling anything much. If you can smell one of the compounds, that's probably a good indication that your equipment isn't sealed properly, there's a problem with the ventilation, or your fumehood sash needs to be pulled down.
The thing that drives me crazy on TV is how much companies market perfumes/air fresheners and various other unnecessary household products as "clean" when they're made out of the same chemicals we wouldn't handle in the lab without protective equipment. All that junk is just chemical pollution, and I wouldn't want to be breathing it in like the people in commercials do
@@boraxmacconachie7082 They don't waft it towards them. They stick their nose right on the test tube and breathe in.
@@blechtic Well, speaking as somebody who's accidentally had the chemicals waft towards him, that is a recipe for getting a nasty acid burn up your nose, or just being straight-up poisoned
@@boraxmacconachie7082 Yep. My high school chemistry teacher told us to rather waft the air on top of the test tube towards us and sniff carefully than to breathe in to smell at the open top. I get it may not be entirely safe but it's significantly better for a bunch of highschoolers. Next time you see a CSI type of thing or that sort of crude chemistry on TV or in a movie, watch them do it horribly wrong. I guess they're all missing a type of expert advisor. I just thought you might have noticed.
Also, OT, I was a little miffed at how the Listerine 10 mouthwash has a sort of a creosote aroma. I have no idea how coal tar becomes "clean mint".
I didn't realize before watching how much more knowledgeable this would make me feel!
The country is not named for the Spanish word for silver, but the river at the north end of its coast is.
And the football team from that location is named after... some sort of etymological mix up, one can only presume.
@@RaytheonTechnologies_Official Presumably some English cartographer who thought he knew Spanish OR a sneaky ploy by the Spaniards to disguise their supposed fortunate discovery
@@derekmills5394 I've always assumed it was from an Argentinean misunderstanding of English, but happy to be proven wrong. As a River Plate supporter, it's just a perplexing oddity to me.
@@RaytheonTechnologies_Official I have seen the river marked "River Plate" on some English-language maps (a National Geographic globe I once had, I think?) It does seem like a mistranslation, but it's an old one, I think.
Edit: I looked it up--it turns out it's just a *really* old translation, from the 16th century when "plate" was often used in English as a term for precious metal!
@@MattMcIrvin huh, that's really interesting. Thanks.
Oooh! Two of my favorite subjects - science and etymology!
I’d thought you would mention aluminum. That was its original name, but scientists at the time suggested aluminium, to follow the then current naming conventions, which American ignored!
The first proposal was 'Alumium'.
This was quite entertaining and interesting. I just have a little comment to your description of the origin of the element letters for Wolfram. Tungsten is derived from Swedish "tung sten", which means heavy stone, not hard stone. It describes the high density of the element.
Dmitry Mendeleev deserves a special call-out, because he's the person who invented the periodic table!
That was what I was thinking too, and then I realised that in Dutch we refer to it as Mendeliev's table in school...And that may be why The English speaking parts of the world forgot about him
If someone was to suggest, let’s spend about 50min discussing the names of elements, you might be forgiven for thinking that will be a bore. But you two managed to keep it entertaining and educational. All of the little wandering off into the science or related topics are great!
I was surprised that aluminium didn’t come up. Probably for the best since it’s been done to death.
Zafarris.....The Iron Sapphire. Sounds like my kind of superhero.
Sapphire and steel.
@@tulliusexmisc2191 some of David McCallum's best work!
Ohh, thank you, you helped me realise why the word 'stannary' is related to tin here in Cornwall! A stannary was a region in Devon and Cornwall where tin was mined and worked, and an administrative division that managed the collection of tin coinage. Love a light bulb moment.
I like any episode where Jess tilts her head like a puppy hearing its name.
That is, every episode.
Yep. She's too cute!
I have 4 Labrador Retrievers, but I thought it would be rude to mention how adorable I think her head tilt is. Puppies and Jess are amazing
What an absolutely delightful episode this was! Thank you.
One word that always comes to mind when I watch these videos is: Eloquent.
Has anyone already mentioned this? The "argyrum" in hydrargyrum is in fact Greek (argyrion), there is no letter y in Latin. The Latin word ist argentum. It's just a little "Latinised", theGreek ending - on replaced with the Latin- um.
Thanks for your interesting content!
I am originally British, but the British use of inflammable in the oxygen section threw me for a second
It was fire
USA has tried to ban the word because it sounds like it shou!d mean its opposite. Flammable and inflammable are synonymous. I suppose tne root is "inflame."
Okay I already follow Jess on the ticky tocky, and I just watch videos from Rob for the first time today, so finding out there's a podcast... *mindblown*
Family name legends, makes me think of a workmate who's family swears they are related to Attila the Hun, who died in 453AD. He once brought in a photocopy of a drawing to show the family resemblance. A drawing from 50 years ago, of a man who died 1500 years ago. And also, it didn't even look like him.
😂. There are none so blind as those who will not see!
Personally, I cannot see the attraction - why would someone think it so wonderful to be descended from Attila the Hun?!
I knew a car mechanic that was a (fairly distant) relative of the last King of Yugoslavia. Technically he would have been an Earl under Serbian nobility. But he was (is?) happy to be a car mechanic in Rotherham!
Actually chances are quite high that your workmate is a descendant of Attila the Hun. Yet, the chances are just as high for you and me (supposing you are at least in part of European descent) to be his descendants.
If you take today's population and go back far enough in history (~500 AD will probably be enough) and look at the population back then, there are exactly two groups of people: Those who don't have any descendants today, and those who are ancestors of *everyone* today (in a given region, say Europe).
I wish it were different, but besides pillaging and mass murder rape has always been an integral part of warfare. (Just because it was "usual", I do not approve of it in any way. It was a crime back then, as it is today!) So, as horrible as it may be, the Huns (just like many invaders before and after) did not only reduce the local population, but also left their genetic footprints in the next generation. And the traces that Attila as the Hunnish king left are probably more significant than those of a common Hunnish soldier.
Loving this , great stuff!
The little goblins in the mines were also known as "Tommyknockers", I assume that is the English language version.
The Cobalt mining goblins remind me of Cornish knockers. They are like gnomes and they also warned miners of collapse by knocking. Hence the name knocker.
Oxy can also be translated as sharp, as in oxymoron, i.e. sharp and dull.
Or customer service.
@@brianarbenz1329 Military intelligence
@@nbartlett6538 Oh yes!
The swedish word for Wolfram is tungsten. Tungsten if directly translated means heavy stone!
Thank you for a lovely episode!
I'm sure you both know zoo is the greek word for animal, basically means "living", and it is pronounced with two separate "o"s. So the germans have the right idea.
6:07 To complete the previous two (Wasserstoff and Sauerstoff), nitrogen is Stickstoff in German (from "ersticken" meaning to smother or to suffocate, plus "Stoff" meaning stuff or substance, hence "the stuff that makes you suffocate").
45:15 And Kohlenstoff (coal + stuff) is the German word for carbon. Also see Kohlensäure (carbonic acid, the "fizzy" in beverages).
You skipped californium and lawrencium, which form another geographic cluster with berkelium. All were discovered at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, which is managed by the University of California, Berkeley.
I waited the whole episode to hear californium!!! But thanks to you, I did get it in the comments!! :)_
"So the '-ium' or '-um' ending is usually used to *coin* the names of metals..." Good one Jess!
To a physicist, everything except Hydrogen is a metal
10:01 Names change so much? I have a New name every minute of every day, but it never changes.
I was puzzled to see Rob speaking but couldn't hear anything. It was only when I turned up the volume that I realised what the element. I'll get my coat. Seriously, this was absolutely fascinating.
Meitnerium, you missed out on high drama. Lise Meitner was a physicist central to the discovery of nuclear fission. She was denied a Nobel largely because she was a woman of Jewish ancestry in Hitler's Germany. Her partner, Otto Hahn was given the Nobel, but denied an “element” name. The Nobel never corrected this error despite numerous petitions. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry committee chose instead to honor Lise Meitner.
Indeed, I was hoping you'd mention her. I only recently read an article about this.
Glad you mentioned her. Just read a book about her life. She should have shared the Nobel with Hahn. Brilliant scientist!
Hahnium and Nielsbohrium were proposed for element 105, now called Dubnium.
as Tornbjørn wrote : "every time I see that you've released a new episode, I’m filled with joy and excitement." I can only agree, you are both shine - with a lovely positive attitude : and the bring the great knowledge you have, to us meer mortals !! (I don't know how to spell meer - is it correct ? I dammed, if I have to go Google translate, and translate what I mean from Danish - so meer it is ≈ "only" mortals).
As a student of Architecture, Palladium reminds me of Andrea Palladio, a very influential renaissance architect. His churches and villas are quite distinctive, drawing heavily from the proportions and symmetries of ancient greek classical art and architecture. Perhaps a fun intersection between architecture and etymology is "Palladium" possibly originating as a name for buildings not of a particular type (e.g. venue) but of a particular style (e.g. Palladian Classical Revival). Not sure of this though i think it warrants more research! Love this podcast :)
"Palladio" was not his original name - I believe he took the name "Palladio" from the name of an angel in an epic written by his patron Trissino. I'm originally from the area where Palladio came from - the Veneto region especially Vicenza.
When the first superheavy element in the island of stability is discovered, I suggest it be called "australium," after the great country and continent of Australia, which is a geologically stable continent.
The noble gasses used to be called "inert" gasses, because it was thought that they categorically never formed compounds at all. And then that turned out not to be entirely accurate.
It is possible that the cypress trees may have been given their name, because they were a source of pitch (which numerous ancient near-eastern languages denote with similar words, along the lines of velar-labial-rhotic, e.g., K-F-R); but this is highly speculative, because phonetic writing, if it even existed yet at all when these things were named, would have been pretty new at the time, and consequently we do not have a large amount of surviving written evidence one way or another, regarding which thing is named for which other thing. So on the one hand it's possible that the metal was named for the island which was named for the trees that were named for the pitch; but on the other hand it's also possible that the trees are named for the island that's named for the metal, and the similarity to the word (in other languages) for pitch, may just be a coincidence, along the lines of English "pan" Spanish "pan" (bread, which is typically baked in a pan, but that's not why it's called "pan").
The English word "zoo" derives ultimately from the Greek word for life, ζωή, which is two syllables; the omega is what we in English would call a "long O", and the eta is a "long A" (like the E in many words of Latin origin). However, I've always pronounced it with the same OO sound as in "boo" and "goo", and "zoology" likewise.
My favorite bit of element etymology trivia, is that "aluminum", "alumium", and "aluminium" were all coined by chemists working from alum and/or alumina, and doing that standard "let's make this sound like the name of an element by adding a suffix" thing, and they chose slightly different forms of the suffix. The really interesting bit is that "aluminum" was coined in Britain, "aluminium" in America, but then chemists on each side of the pond adopted the foreign word rather than the domestic one. Perhaps that says something about the scientific community in that era. The other really interesting thing about aluminum, is that it used to be very expensive, even though the ore has always been common, because the available refining processes were impractical to use on any kind of large scale, until the advent of high-temperature electrolysis.
If HP and the Philosopher's Stone had been the _second_ book in the series, I think the title could have been used in the American market, because the "Harry Potter" part would've been enough to sell the book at that point; but since it was the first book in the series, the publisher was concerned that A) American children would not know enough about medieval alchemy to get the reference, and more importantly B) no book with any version of the word "philosophy" in it could be expected to sell well in the American market, because no academic subject is more stereotypically boring, than philosophy. Might as well call it "Harry Potter and the Tax Exemption". Which, again, once the series was established, I'm sure Harry Potter and the Tax Exemption would have sold just fine. But as the first book in the series, it's a risky title. Sorcerers, on the other hand, are inherently exciting to gradeschool children.
I remember, at school, we learned about inert gasses. There wasn't so many of them back in the 70's. Or maybe I wasn't too interested!!
It took a few years before I found out that noble gasses are, in fact, what we called inert.
@@loisdungey3528 By the time I was in school in the eighties, we had the whole column down to radon. Oganesson, of course, had not yet been "discovered" (i.e., made in a particle accelerator in single-atom quantities); I think by the time I was in high school it was listed with its Latin-number name (ununoctium or whatever) as a purely theoretical element. That was also about the same time I started hearing the new term "noble gasses" instead of "inert gasses".
Every single one of the "inert gasses" turns out to form compounds, not necessarily stable at room temperature (helium).