Like many scientists in the GMPV sphere, I work a lot with geochemistry – using chemical elements and their differing behaviours, abundances or isotopes as tools to understand Earth processes. While staring at the periodic table, something that’s always niggled at me is where the names of these come from: why is the stuff we breath called oxygen and the sand on the beach made of silicon? Even more ...[Read More]
Elemental etymology – what’s in a name?
Al-Razi's Recueil des traités de médecine translated by Gerard of Cremona, from the second half of the 13th century. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.