tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Mar 16 12:51:19 2000
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Re: elements
- From: SuSvaj <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: elements
- Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 16:09:31 -0500
At 11:20 AM 03/16/2000 CST, you wrote:
>that said, nitrogen is "choke matter" ("Stickstoff") in
>German too; my guess(!) is, that the name comes because
>a nitrogen atmosphere will "choke" a flame; any chemists?
>
>of course I haven't the slightest idea how Klingon chemists
>decided on the names for these gases.
>
> Marc Ruehlaender
A very good point. The nameing of an element often has to do with how it
was discovered. Helium was so named because it was first discovered on the
surface of the sun (the Helios element). As common a gas as it is, it now
may seem strange to associate helium with the sun, but at the time it was
not known to exist anywhere else. Without knowing the circumstances of how
Klingon scientists discovered voQSIp, we can't know the true origen of the
name.
SuSvaj