Slashdot Mirror
Periodic Table Gets a New, Unnamed Element
koavf writes "More than a decade after experiments first produced a single atom of 'super-heavy' element 112, a team of German scientists has been credited with its discovery, but it has yet to be named. The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry has temporarily named the element ununbium, as 'ununbi' means 'one one two' in Latin; but the team now has the task of proposing its official name." Slashdotium? Taconium? Man, I shoulda gone into science so I could have named something sweet that kids have to memorize in classes.
^ As one article puts it, referring to information Seaborg gave in a talk: "The obvious choice for the symbol would have been Pl, but facetiously, Seaborg suggested Pu, like the words a child would exclaim, 'Pee-yoo!' when smelling something bad. Seaborg thought that he would receive a great deal of flak over that suggestion, but the naming committee accepted the symbol without a word." Clark, David L.; Hobart, David E. (2000). "Reflections on the Legacy of a Legend: Glenn T. Seaborg, 1912â"1999" (PDF). Los Alamos Science 26: 56â"61, on 57. Retrieved on 2009-02-15 http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/pubs/00818011.pdf
Apart from BEER, humanity itself, controlled fire, language (probably), sterilisation of food and water, the world's tallest building (a pyramid) until recently, the roots of most modern popular music genres, airmail (by homing pigeon), the pendulum, the tunnel boring machine, stone tools, knives, pigments, burial, housing, bread, plywood, cement, river boats, sutures, the aqueduct, candles, glass, the water clock, toothpaste, metal block printing, coffee, the astrolabe, the ventilator, explosive gunpowder, the cannon, handguns, cartridges, heart transplants, the CAT scanner, ....
You mean, apart for all that?