Games & Recreation Pointless Trivia

Dec 14, 2007
43,538
26,162
Adelaide
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Adelaide
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Dec 14, 2007
43,538
26,162
Adelaide
AFL Club
Adelaide

emuboy

Premiership Player
Dec 17, 2006
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4,600
The Southern Hemisphere
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South Fremantle, Sturt
There are chemical elements starting with every letter of the alphabet except for J, Q and W. However the element Tungsten (74) was originally called Wolfram, and therefore it appears as a W on the periodic table. The letters J and Q do not appear on the periodic table at all.
 

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Norm Smith Medallist
Apr 12, 2005
9,755
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Bentleigh, Melbourne
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Among the tons of stuff my late grandmother left behind was a receipt for some furniture, etc, from 1965. She paid 200 quid for a Simpson washine machine, 159 quid for a lounge suite, and 86 quid for a Simmons Mattress. I found a pre-decimal inflation calculator. In today's money (well, 2018, because that's as far as the calculator goes):
200 pounds = $5,427
159 pounds = $4,315
86 pounds = $2,334.

I reckon that's a lot. I should've hit her up for more coins when I was little.

Tell all ya friends. Ha. :p

I hope that washing machine lasted a long time. I think it did.
 
May 8, 2007
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vic
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Richmond
The original term for the element Aluminium was Aluminum. This was the name chosen by the discoverer, Englishman Humphrey Davey. It followed standard naming conventions for other elements like Molybdenum and Platinum that had similar oxides (Aluminium was extracted from alumina - the naturally occurring oxide).

However, only a couple of years after its discovery, another famous British scientist Thomas Young insisted that the element should be named Aluminium - why? - because it 'sounded better'. He preferred names ending in -ium, like Sodium, Barium etc. Young was well regarded at the time, and so his idea caught on. There was a bit of both names being used over time around the world - when Webster's Dictionary used Aluminum, it became the US standard. Both names were still used around the world, although except for the US, Aluminium was more popular.

Aluminium was only formal listed as the correct name in the 1990s (after years of very heated arguments), although Aluminum was still accepted as an alternative.

Although it's fun to laugh at US constant mangling of the English language, there's a pretty good argument that they got this one right.
 
The original term for the element Aluminium was Aluminum. This was the name chosen by the discoverer, Englishman Humphrey Davey. It followed standard naming conventions for other elements like Molybdenum and Platinum that had similar oxides (Aluminium was extracted from alumina - the naturally occurring oxide).

However, only a couple of years after its discovery, another famous British scientist Thomas Young insisted that the element should be named Aluminium - why? - because it 'sounded better'. He preferred names ending in -ium, like Sodium, Barium etc. Young was well regarded at the time, and so his idea caught on. There was a bit of both names being used over time around the world - when Webster's Dictionary used Aluminum, it became the US standard. Both names were still used around the world, although except for the US, Aluminium was more popular.

Aluminium was only formal listed as the correct name in the 1990s (after years of very heated arguments), although Aluminum was still accepted as an alternative.

Although it's fun to laugh at US constant mangling of the English language, there's a pretty good argument that they got this one right.
I thought that the original name was Alumium.
 
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