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.
n2burns@lemmy.ca 1 year 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 1 year ago
marsokod@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s interesting, it looks like I may have a bias on that due to my scientific background.