Page 69 - Where the Dream Ends ebook

Chemistry 101

it comes and goes pretty quickly. Where is it going? And where
did it come from? The way I see it, it doesn’t particularly like it
here. Me, I wouldn’t encourage it. My mother always said you
offer an invitation three times, after that, forget it.

You might be interested in knowing that americium has
been translated into other languages: in French it is américi-
um, in German americium, in Italian and Spanish americio.
Since this is very easy to memorize, when you’re traveling to
Europe or Latin American, be sure to use this information to
impress locals with your knowledge of their language.

When I was looking for information about americium on
the internet, one of the references took me to a triple X sex
page. I couldn’t find anything about americium there though,
so I have to assume it was only entered as a key word by an as-
tute web page designer who knows something we don’t know
about chemists.

3. Yttrium and Ytterbium

No, Yttrium and Ytterbium is not the name of a law firm.
They are elements. Imagine! Not one, but two elements have
been named using that all-too-familiar English prefix, yttr.

Actually, Ytterby is a village in Sweden where Johann Gad-
olin, a Finn, discovered yttrium in 1794. What was Gadolin
doing in Sweden, playing with rocks, when he should have
been home with his family in Finland?

Gadolinium, another element, was named after Gadolin, as
well as a mineral, gadolinite, Not wanting to favor one scien-
tist by naming too many discoveries after him, they named his

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