Names ... (Was: Note : Pi 2 Zero W Now RIP-OFF Price on Amazon)

On 10/08/2026 11:46, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>> Yes ... but the formation of the word is similar. It is a jokey
>> made- up name that suggests that it is a pure substance, when it
>> is actually an ad-hoc mixture of nuclear fuel, moderator, reactor
>> wall materials, concrete, and random shit that happened to get in
>> the way when the reactor melted.
> 
> hardly jokey and all names are 'made up...

There is humour in the naming, if not in the substance itself. Don't you 
agree? Each to his own, I suppose.

Yes, all names are made up, at some level. That's really beside the 
point I was making and I'm sorry I mentioned it.

> Curium is a synthetic radioactive chemical element with the symbol
> Cm and atomic number 96. Named after scientists Marie and Pierre
> Curie, it was first produced in 1944 by bombarding plutonium with
> alpha particles. It is also the name of a major global
> radiopharmaceutical company
> 
> Selenium. Named after the noon because it was found along with 
> tellurium, meaning Earth...
> 
> Tungsten: Derived from Swedish (tung + sten) because the mineral ore
> is very dense and heavy.
> 
> Wolfram (Chemical Symbol W): Comes from the mineral wolframite. The
> name originates from German tin miners. They called it wolfram
> because the mineral hindered tin extraction by "devouring" the tin
> like a wolf eats a sheep (wolf + ram/foam)
> 
> and so on....

Indeed, but these are all pure substances and naming them makes some sense.

> Corium comes from a reactor CORE
> 
> nothing jokey about it

The joke lies in naming it in a way that suggests it's a well-defined 
pure substance.

Now, if, say, it were found that the material resulting from a reactor 
meltdown typically contained some new element with a higher atomic 
number than Oganesson (which Wikipedia tells me is the highest that has 
been discovered, and more relevantly named, so far) it would not be 
jokey to name that element Corium. Giving an element-sounding name to an 
ad-hoc mixture is a joke.

> Unobtanium follows the same rules, and the joke is that the first
> part means it doesn't exist or cant be sourced.
> 
> Like fairy farts and unicorn dung

Or rocking-horse droppings.

-- 
Cheers,
  Daniel.