When Chemists Attack

Several years ago, I asked a large class of introductory chemistry students to name H₂CO₃. Since we had just been over the oxyacids (acids that contain hydrogen and oxygen in addition to other elements), I expected nearly all of them to give me the name carbonic acid.

I was mistaken. While many students did indeed identify the compound as carbonic acid, I got many other responses. Here they are.

1. hydrogen carbonate
2. hydrogen oxide
3. hydrocarbonate acid
4. dihydrogen tricarbonate
5. hydrocarbonoxide acid
6. dihydrogen carbonate
7. dihydrogen tricarbon
8. dihydromonocarbontrioxic acid
9. dihydrotricarbonic acid
10. dihydromonocarbonic acid
11. hydrogen cardonate
12. dihydrogen tricarboxide
13. dihydrogen tricobalt
14. hydrogencarbonic acid
15. dihydrogen tricarbonite
16. hydrocarbonous

Kinda makes your head spin, doesn’t it?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 11th, 2006 at 6:22 pm and is filed under Science education, Silly stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.