Flour or fluor?
Jul 31st 2007Wallabynerd alert
It’s amazing how many people can’t spell “fluorescence”. Actually maybe it’s not all that amazing. It’s certainly amazing that many people who study fluorescence can’t spell it – usually it comes out “flourescence”, which I guess is what happens when wheat gluten decays from an excited state by emitting photons. (Or else that’s mold.) But “flourescence” shows up in papers and conference slides and I’ve even seen it on a graduate student’s slides for his candidacy exam.
Perhaps the IUPAC should simply give in and change the name to “florine” and “florescence”. But then we’d wind up with confusion over “floral” compounds (like < "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geraniol">geraniol – rose odor) and “florides” and what happens when someone florinates geraniol to produce florofloral extracts? It works fine in German, so maybe the problem is as much English as Chemish…
