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The ends of elements

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When elements 117 and 118 are finally named, should these new members of the halogen and noble gas families receive names ending in -ium as IUPAC has suggested? Brett F. Thornton and Shawn C. Burdette look at the history of element suffixes and make the case for not following this recommendation.

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Figure 1: The English names of the chemical elements as of the end of 2012.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Brett F. Thornton is in the Department of Geological Sciences (IGV) and Bert Bolin Centre for Climate Research, Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden,

    Brett F. Thornton

  2. Shawn C. Burdette is in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, Massachusetts 01609-2280, USA,

    Shawn C. Burdette

Authors
  1. Brett F. Thornton
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  2. Shawn C. Burdette
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Correspondence to Brett F. Thornton or Shawn C. Burdette.

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Thornton, B., Burdette, S. The ends of elements. Nature Chem 5, 350–352 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.1610

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