Philosophy Discussion Forums

wanabe wrote:The premise is to allow people to learn one way of leaning to speak chemistry. Before adding a bunch of jive with nomenclature names in a respective language.

the Japanese as a matter of fact use the same chemical symbols as us (the old stereotypical westerners) http://www.jergym.hiedu.cz/~canovm/vyhl ... japan.html ...They had to! learn some English.

I'm sorry you get lost in political correctness before you see the real point.

What a cop out. You want to call this political correctness so that you shove this to some far reach of your brain and not think about it.

Now what we have here is that the Japanese use the symbols language (which I never said they didn't), you wanting them to scrap that usage of the symbols and change their entire spoken language for your laziness. Your point is not to use the symbols because you feel it is a waste of time. I fundamentally disagree with your from a scientific and a practicality standpoint.

I really don't want any body to scrap a language. I don't know where your getting that idea from. I think its better if we have more languages.

I also never wanted to scrap the use of symbols.

You should ask questions before you make a bunch of assertions; and personal opinions about some one.

wanabe wrote:I really don't want any body to scrap a language. I don't know where your getting that idea from. I think its better if we have more languages.

I also never wanted to scrap the use of symbols.

You should ask questions before you make a bunch of assertions; and personal opinions about some one.

I guess we read this sentence differently.

It seems like a lot of time and energy could be saved by simply calling the elements by their names and adding respective scripts when "translating" chemistry to English. If there is a common name than use it; such as water:H_20.

This to me looks like a suggestion to stop using the symbols.

And this sentence bellow suggests to me that you want other languages to change their written languages so that they will use more English.

Japanese have to learn the western words to communicate in what originally developed as a western language (chemistry).

I see how that could be implied, allow me to explain.

wanabe: "It seems like a lot of time and energy could be saved by simply calling the elements by their names[or symbols] and adding respective scripts[just like we do with the symbols] when "translating" chemistry[the symbols] to English[or any other language; ex: carbonate=CO_3^2-. In Japanese carbonate would have a different name, so they would use that one]. If there is a common name than use it; such as water:H_20."

Also in the OP, and in the edition to the OP I added later, I referred constantly to the name of the compound with the symbol. Just in case you think I'm making this up---> ex: the above quote even has this: “such as water:H_20”....Also it's flagrantly obvious that doing chemical equations with hole words would be too space consuming to be practical; my entire goal was to make chemistry easier to learn.

wanabe: “Japanese have to learn the western words to communicate in what originally developed as a western language (chemistry).”

I was stating this as a matter of fact: A Japanese person must learn some amount of English because the periodic table of elements uses English characters.

So you see it was lost in the word translation, and for that I apologize.
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NOW, the above is entirely irrelevant; because some names for substances are shorter and less complicated than their chemical compound; as alun told us. Which is exactly why I started this thread.

As a graduate student in synthetic organic chemistry, I always felt sorry for the poor undergrads. They did not have the lab experience to know the names (or the formulas) of the most commonly used compounds; which comes only with experience and just being around the chemistry lab. To be very simple in explanation, every chemical compound known to man has an IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry) name, which is governed by various ground rules. But practicing chemists hardly ever use the IUPAC name. They simply use the common names based on traditional usage. As an example, chemists prefer to use the term "phenol" rather than "1-hydroxybenzene". Good luck.

wanabe wrote:I am currently taking a chemistry class. The language to me seems quite cryptic; in as far as taking CO_3^2- and calling it carbonate. Or: C_2H_3O_2^2- and calling that acetate. Last one: PbCl_4 and calling that lead(IV) chloride.

It seems like a lot of time and energy could be saved by simply calling the elements by their names and adding respective scripts when "translating" chemistry to English. If there is a common name than use it; such as water:H_20.

If any one is a chemistry buff and wants to elaborate on how this can't work, and maybe even enlighten me as to how to make sense of this better, it would be much appreciated.

Or to simply discuss simple compounds (as that is all I'm able to do so far) just to practice the language that would be nice as well.
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Ok, let me see if I can make this more clear as people are not understanding what I'm asking, or just want to have an answer.

There is a name that is pure chemistry for something example: CO_3^2-; That is "carbonate". How would one naturally translate CO_3^2- to "carbonate" unless someone told them; they could not! Why not to make things less cryptic; call it "carbon-oxygen_3^2-"(=CO_3^2)-.The meaning of the numbers could be taught in a day, if it takes that long. Based on what I know of chemistry, there is no good reason, other than the historically fallacious: "thats how its done". OR there is the: "its shorter". To that I say: it's shorter to say, but takes 10 times longer to learn. It's difficult enough as it is to memorize the innumerable qualities an element can have, let alone a compound. Why gum it up with some hybrid language that is a class all in it self?

Hope that helps.

Because the carbonate apears enough and has his own propiertis, and it's similar to other things, like sulfate, and things ended in "-ate" (I don't know chemistry in your language, but I guess that's how they saay it). But remember that you are a student, if you work in that, you'll use the shortest name.

And... because only a few people think that and people in general hate changes.

But you should know that there have been different names for the same things over time, new standards, etc. I had to study 3: Traditional, stock, and systematic. The systematic is near to what you say, in my language, this H2SO4 would be "TetraoxoSulfato(IV) de dihidrógeno" instead of the traditional "Ácido sulfúrico". I guess it's similar in your language.

Desertwisdom wrote:As a graduate student in synthetic organic chemistry, I always felt sorry for the poor undergrads. They did not have the lab experience to know the names (or the formulas) of the most commonly used compounds; which comes only with experience and just being around the chemistry lab. To be very simple in explanation, every chemical compound known to man has an IUPAC (International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry) name, which is governed by various ground rules. But practicing chemists hardly ever use the IUPAC name. They simply use the common names based on traditional usage. As an example, chemists prefer to use the term "phenol" rather than "1-hydroxybenzene". Good luck.

Hey glad to hear about your academic career path choice. What are you synthesizing?

Actually, I worked in the lab only for graduate research. After graduation I became a registered patent agent and did literature and patent research on novel inventions in chemistry and biology; as well as writing patent applications for some big companies like Mobil Oil (before the merger with Exxon), IBM (and individual inventors).

My graduate synthesis project was on making Loganin and also various pterocarpans such as Phaseolin.

Desertwisdom wrote:Actually, I worked in the lab only for graduate research. After graduation I became a registered patent agent and did literature and patent research on novel inventions in chemistry and biology; as well as writing patent applications for some big companies like Mobil Oil (before the merger with Exxon), IBM (and individual inventors).

My graduate synthesis project was on making Loganin and also various pterocarpans such as Phaseolin.

Very cool. I never did chemistry grad school but worked with grad students when I was doing undergrad research many decades ago. The grad students seemed to have a lot of fun. I worked on a way of cheaply making cyclohexenes so the grad students could make their multicyclic organics in more bulk. I haven't thought of those days for awhile. I had a lot of fun with those guys.

Yes, I agree that working around the chemistry lab was always fun. However, safety always was number one. We had a bad experience with n-butyl lithium ... an explosive fire caused by storing the material in a refrigerator that was not explosion proof.

Wow, sounds scary. Were you there when it went off? Was all of your research destroyed?

The explosion occurred overnight, so I was not present. We had large containers of solvent (dimethyl ether) near the frig, which the firemen bravely took across the street to a fire academy ... and blew them up. The day before the explosion I had just synthesized about 10 or 20 grams of material in an early stage of a total synthesis project. The firemen removed all chemicals in the lab and destroyed them.

Like a lot of "cryptic" conventions in science and math, it's just an inconvenience that these words were traditionally used, so they've been taught that way even as new and more comprehensive ideas were uncovered. An example from math is the convention of calling multiples of the constant i (sqrt(-1)) "imaginary", when they're anything but.

This thread is unusual in that it is about Chemistry.

The physical sciences are traditionally divided up into three disciplines: Physics, Chemistry and Biology. There seems to be loads of potential for philosophical discussion in Physics (Quantum Mechanics, Thermodynamics, Relativity, the origins of the universe etc) and quite a lot in Biology (Evolution, Life etc) but Chemistry is stuck in the middle. I wonder why.

It seems that the philosophically interesting parts are often at the edges. Chemistry is the meat in the sciencey sandwich.

Steve3007 wrote:This thread is unusual in that it is about Chemistry.

The physical sciences are traditionally divided up into three disciplines: Physics, Chemistry and Biology. There seems to be loads of potential for philosophical discussion in Physics (Quantum Mechanics, Thermodynamics, Relativity, the origins of the universe etc) and quite a lot in Biology (Evolution, Life etc) but Chemistry is stuck in the middle. I wonder why.

It seems that the philosophically interesting parts are often at the edges. Chemistry is the meat in the sciencey sandwich.

Sounds like things have changed. Back in the day the three Physical sciences were physics, chemistry and mathematics. Biology was considered a semi-soft science and the Social Sciences were very squishy.