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Article: The symbols of the chemical elements.
- Article from:
- Word Ways
- Article date:
- February 1, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Jeremiah Farrell. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The names of the chemical elements have received a certain amount of attention in Word Ways over the years. The very first issue of Word Ways in February 1968 presented a quiz on 20 transposed element names. Later articles have offered more extensive transpositions, trnsadditions, old names for some of the elements, elements in US placenames, and words composed solely of the element symbols, such as CoAgULaTe.
In this article, I want to examine the symbols of the chemical elements as an ordered collection of letters. Many earlier items in Word Ways have treated the typewriter (computer) keyboard as an ordered sequence of letters (QWERTYUIOPASDFGHJKLZXCVBNM) and ...