Comment on Firms are exploring sodium batteries as an alternative to lithium
marsokod@lemmy.world 7 months agoMost likely because the news is in English. And why would Natrium be better on an international forum?
It is Sodium in most Latin languages (despite Natrium being Latin), in Hindi and in Arabic. And Chinese has a different root. Among the 10 most spoken languages (according to Wikipedia), only Russian is using Natrium.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 7 months ago
n2burns@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
As a native English speaker, I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone call NaCl just “Sodium”, it’s always called Sodium Chloride.
Buffalox@lemmy.world 7 months ago
marsokod@lemmy.world 7 months ago
That’s interesting, it looks like I may have a bias on that due to my scientific background.
doctorspike@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I’m a PhD candidate in chemistry. I’ve never once seen sodium refer to the salt, sodium chloride. Sodium is the metallic form or the atom.
However, why sodium, tungsten, lead, antimony, tin, silver, gold, mercury, iron, and potassium and not their Latin forms? Natrium, wolfram, plumbum, stibium, stannum, argentum, aurum, hydrargyrum, Ferrum and kalium? I don’t really know. Mostly it’s just fun trivia for me to tell the undergrads.
marsokod@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I always said salt, of sodium chloride for NaCl. Who is using sodium for table salt? The only time I heard that associated was when saying that table salt is a source of sodium, which is true.