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[yubsie]

I'm so glad German was the language that let me eat lunch back in second year. It's proven WAY more useful than I would have expected. Meaning directly relevant to my chemistry. I spent a good chunk of this morning deciphering a paper in German. I've learned lots of exciting new terminology. Like Naturim! It's sodium! One of the other "What is THAT?" words turned out to be an addition funnel thanks to the pictures that came up when I googled.

There's one term that I think MIGHT be sodium tertbutoxide. Unfortunately, the Aldrich Germany site is in ENGLISH so my devious plan to check was FOILED. Since sodium tertbutoxide isn't in any ordinary dictionary. :p

The important thing is that this paper told me the thing I want to make IS a solid (Schmp (that's the German abbreviation for melting point :p) 44 C, but it's a solid at room temperature!). I also found out it sublimes thanks to picking out Kuhlfinger.

I also EVENTUALLY figured out that the first three or so paragraph of the experimental were describing how they distilled the t-butanol. Mostly because this is a paper from 1953. Fun times. :p

Comments

[virusq.livejournal.com]

Sodium = Naturim = Na. I knew that one! :D

[barbiejedi.livejournal.com]

One of the fun things about German chemistry is that once upon a time the "language officials" or whotheheckever were having one of their random "OMG LOANWORDS DESTROY THE PURITY OF OUR LANGUAGE" fits and went around translating Latin and Greek borrowings into the equivalent German form.

Therefore oxygen = Sauerstoff and hydrogen = Wasserstoff. I dunno how serious they got with it further in to the periodic table... and you probably already knew those two. XD

[/nerding out]

[chibifrieza.livejournal.com]

That's way too awesome. It sort of reminds me of the time I got to use my high school French at work to translate a histrionic letter pleading for me to grant a credit card despite a bad credit history, which I would have sworn was from a woman until I got to the signature. :P