Natural Science

Suddenly, all the links converged. And thus is a revelation achieved. Or maybe, archived. Take a look at Natural Science...

Readings on the Nature of Science

I am indebted to the University of Illinois for assembling what I think is the best collection of Nature of Science readings on the Net. It is best to me because it covers everything a sensible student needs to know without being overly technical.

I highly, seriously and specifically recommend this page. All my students should read all the links on it.

Sulphur

Sulphur is how most of us spell it. Of course, by IUPAC reckoning, this is not how it should be spelt. The problem is that the 'ph' is a Greek sound, and not a Germanic one, and 'sulphur' was originally spelt 'sulfur', from OE seolfor.

This is not a new problem. Color, center, theater, and more... all these spellings were used by Shakespeare. The problem arose when the common trans-Atlantic language diverged during the Enlightenment and thereafter. For some reason, the English decided that 'classical' spellings and words (i.e. Frenchified or Romanticised) looked better. So 'color' became 'colour' (to look more like French 'coleur', I suppose); the same is true of the rest.

The great thing about chemistry, of course, is that we can (and indeed, should) just use symbols for chemical expressions, and then it will not matter how we spell 'sulphur' - which is Dr Beavon's point exactly.