the roundandround board of the firststuffs (was: English syllable structure)

"H. S. Teoh" wrote:
> *shrug* I'm not a chem major either, but I used to be able to reproduce
> the entire periodic table from memory except for some of the lanthanide
> series and the post-uranium elements. And yes, I knew exactly what every
> element's symbol stood for. . . .
As a child I once asked why the names were assigned so haphazardly.
Why not give the name Actinium to the first element, Aluminum to the
next, then Argon and so on?  (Assuming I haven't forgotten one; I never
had a good reason to learn more than a few.)  It seems rather a shame
that Mendeleev's "eka-" names were not kept and extended.

--
Anton Sherwood  --  http://www.ogre.nu/

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