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Mar 6, 2006

The Chemical Name Game

Posted in Chemistry at 8:14 pm by David Bradley -- 4 Comments; add your comment

Working chemists would much prefer to be left to their own devices to come up with names for the compounds they discover. Names that trip off the tongue, names that twist it. Names that honour colleagues, the famous, home towns and occasionally slime moulds are all much nicer than sticking to the rules. So what’s in a name? as the man asked, and why shouldn’t we keep it trivial?

Read my cynical take on all that is systematic and all that is trivial in the world of chemical nomenclature

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4 Comments »

  1. Jean-Claude Bradley said,

    March 7, 2006 at 10:35 am

    Chemistry nomenclature can actually be piles of fun - see this site
    http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/sillymolecules/sillymols.htm


  2. sciencebase said,

    March 7, 2006 at 10:50 am

    It can indeed, I wrote that piece at a time when I had a stack of names to produce to deadline and was feeling less than benevolent towards any and all nomenclature systems. Paul May’s Silly Molecules site is a great chemical diversion and I have mentioned it several times in the past in the likes of New Scientist and, of course, on Sciencebase.


  3. naeem said,

    April 1, 2007 at 2:04 pm

    what is the chemical name of AZODICARBONIMADE


  4. David Bradley said,

    April 6, 2007 at 11:58 am

    naeem, do you mean azodicarbonamide, I guess that would be diazene-1,2-dicarboxamide.

    InChI=1/C2H4N4O2/c3-1(7)5-6-2(4)8/h(H2,3,7)(H2,4,8)/f/h3-4H2


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