Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Thulium
Don't you just hate it when you get back from a long weekend to find a stack of work on your desk and a dozen brush-fires to put out?
In the little bit of down-time I took today, I decided to read up on Element 69 from the Periodic Table of Elements. I've been meaning to do this for some time, expecting there to be a treasure-trove of juvenile gags and double-entendres to exploit.
No such luck. Bummer. Element 69 is called thulium. It's a rare earth and one of the rarest substances on earth. It has some limited applications in lasers and x-rays, but it is so scarce and expensive that these applications aren't commercially feasible. Thulium compounds have no commercial application. There are no interesting anecdotes about its origin. It's named after an island off the north coast of Greenland. It couldn't be more boring.
No bonerium. No cunilingium. No such fun to brighten my work-day. Ho hum.
Really, it wasn't very thoughtful of the Periodic Table people. Couldn't they have said "Hey there Per Teodor Cleve. We know you are a noted Swedish chemist and geologist, but could you hold off on publishing about this thulium stuff for a couple months? We've got number 69 coming up and we'd like to save it for something really special."
At the very least, they could have nudged him to come up with a better name. Would it have killed him to call it bigbreastedSwedishblondium ?
You know what I'm saying?
posted by Mentok @ 6:45 p.m.,
3 Comments:
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At 10:45 a.m.,
FiL said...
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Life is so unfair...
So, how are you coping all flooded out and bereft of healthcare? Sonds rather primitive from out here in Beautiful BC. ;-) -
At 6:38 p.m.,
cchang said...
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I'm on a mission to discover a new element just so I can name it
bigbreastedSwedishblondium
maybe Thulium could be anagram-ized to make a word meaning bom-chicka-bom-bom in some other lanugage, like I dunno, lil- um-uh-? -
At 12:31 a.m.,
Mentok said...
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Fil - Brag all you want about Beautiful BC. I'll be there in mere days, guarding the mountain passes to prevent any further of your escape attempts ;-) (no flooding where I live; the strike hasn't started and may not)
Cindy - thanks for your support, and best wishes on your scientific endeavours. If you succeed, I promise to line my house entirely with bigbreastedSwedishblondium.
The anagram business holds some hope. The best I can do is "i luth u-m" which is what "I love you" might sound like if, ya know, there was something obstructing one's tongue. ;-)
Maybe we're approaching this the wrong way. Maybe we should be trying to inject funny into thulium, rather than extract funny from it. "Hey baby, whaddaya say to some thulium. Ya know, element 69."
That could really take off as a big nerd pick-up line - something you could imagine Kip from Napoleon Dynamite saying.
