6 ms·
Not exactly surprising that it’s in Sweden, as many rare earth metals were first discovered here and are named after Swedish things: - Scandium from Scandinavi
by robin_reala 4y ago
Not exactly surprising that it’s in Sweden, as many rare earth metals were first discovered here and are named after Swedish things:
- Scandium from Scandinavia
- Yttrium, Terbium, Erbium and Ytterbium from the village of Ytterby
- Holmium from Stockholm
- Thulium from Thule
- wodenokoto 4y agoIsn't Thule on Greenland (or are there multiple Thule around?)
- capableweb 4y agoThere seems to be multiple Thule, but none of them in Sweden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_(disambiguation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_(disambiguation), although there seems to be a Swedish brand with the name as well, but unrelated to the location as far as I can tell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_Group
- jeltz 4y agoThule comes from a Greek cartographer, Pytheas. Thule was supposed to be an island to the north of Britain, but nobody knows what he referred to or if whatever place he referred to even was real. Some people, especially 19th century Scandinavian nationalists, associate Thule with Scandinavia.
- coremoff 4y agothis is possibly in reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland
- jeltz 4y agoUnlikely. Thule was supposed to exist in 330 BC, long after Doggerland had disappeared. There are many other candidates which would make more sense and fit better with his descriptions, including Norway.
- SuoDuanDao 4y agoMultiple I think. I believe Thule was the capital of the Greenland Norse civilization, but it's also a local story about a high culture that disappeared.
- rafaelmelhem 4y agoWould Thorium be part of that list as well? Edit: I kinda know that because I have some weird passion about the elements of periodic table and because I'm reading "Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of The Elements From Arsenic To Zinc" which I really recommend!
- Majestic121 4y agoIndeed, good catch : > Thorium was discovered in 1828 by the Norwegian amateur mineralogist Morten Thrane Esmark and identified by the Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius, who named it after Thor, the Norse god of thunder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium
- robin_reala 4y agoThere’s also tungsten: “tung” is heavy, and “sten” stone in Swedish.
- jeltz 4y agoWhich interestingly is called Volfram in Swedish.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- u320 4y agoTungsten refers to the rock where the element is found. The english language reused the name for the actual element.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- User23 4y agoAnd in English we use both Tungsten and Wolfram. The former is more popular, but the latter is still the basis of the element's symbol.
- MasterYoda 4y agoQuite impressive that little Sweden has found the second most elements in the world, 19 of them. https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/legacy_blog/06_21_2013_periodic-table.jpg https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/legac...
- counttheforks 4y ago[flagged]
- spoiler 4y agoI think they used impressive colloquially. I guess more fitting would be "interesting/amusing" Although, I think yours is a far bigger offence: being intentionally ignorant for the purpose of being an asshole online
- endisneigh 4y agoi'm genuinely curious what about their comment makes them an asshole. the comment is a bit dismissive, but hardly assholish
- tomrod 4y agoCollapse of the behavioral wave function due to observation?
- BigJ1211 4y agoIt just reads as a snarky comment for me, doesn't really add value as everybody with a modicum of english knowledge should be able to understand.
- pdpi 4y agoThe combination of being dismissive and adding nothing to the conversation is what makes it assholish. Their only contribution was to shoot down what was an interesting aside.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 2000UltraDeluxe 4y agoAlso, Tungsten.
- hrnnnnnn 4y agoAnnoyingly, even though tungsten literally means "heavy stone" in Swedish, the name of the element in Swedish is "volfram".
- InCityDreams 4y agoAluminum (American pronunciation) not being 'from/ of the Earth', or 'of Scandinavia', it would appear.