I was wearing my Bacon t-shirt, and got to wondering, what's the longest word made solely with the atomic symbols of every atom in a compound?
For example, ${CO_{2}}$ would be coo, since there are two ${O}$ atoms.
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Sign up to join this communityI was wearing my Bacon t-shirt, and got to wondering, what's the longest word made solely with the atomic symbols of every atom in a compound?
For example, ${CO_{2}}$ would be coo, since there are two ${O}$ atoms.
A possible eight is
Choo-choo a childish name for a locomotive which chemically is oxalic acid ${C_{2}H_{2}}O_{4}$
CCHHOOOO
which my dictionary tells me isn't a word.
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Mar 13, 2017 at 9:41
A possible six (without anagramming):
Co2As, whose existence I think can be confirmed by this article, becomes cocoas.
I have found 1 five:
sodium monosulfide - Na2S - NANAS (5)
And lots of fours. Here are just some:
dicobalt phosphide - CO2P - COOP (4)
barium fluoride - BaF2 - BAFF (4)
barium selenide - BaSe - BASE (4)
calcium selenide - CaSe - CASE (4)
copper (II) fluoride - CuF2 - CUFF (4)
copper (II) telluride - CuTe - CUTE (4)
gallium (II) telluride - GaTe - GATE (4)
molybdenum sulfide - MoS2 - MOSS (4)
Can't find anything longer than five...
I believe I have reached the Fluorine Iodine Nitrogen Iodine Sulfur Hydrogen
We need a real chemist to determine what's actually possible, I think. But I have a plausible 6:
H / O==Te \ Cl
would yield
CLOTHE.
[EDITED to add: No, duh, that won't do because I'm splitting up the letters of a chemical symbol and that isn't allowed. Thanks to Beastly Gerbil for pointing that out in comments. I'm leaving this here in case anything in it turns out to be useful to others.]
Does that compound exist? I don't see why not. If you take a look at
the box at top right of the Wikipedia page on organotellurium chemistry you'll see a similar structure with an arbitrary hydrocarbon radical in place of the chlorine. In ordinary organic chemistry one can commonly substitute a halogen for a hydrocarbon radical, and looking at the various halides also present in that box it seems like the same is true with tellurium. Note also that the corresponding compound with carbon in the middle is formyl chloride which definitely exists.
But I'm not a chemist and maybe I'm making illegitimate analogies here.
I MAY have a 10 if you'll allow 1) a hyphenated word with 2) an extra, unnecessary character on the end...