Names Vague

If you re a sports fan, you ve almost certainly seen this structure before. It is that of a soccer ball with a carbon atom at each vertex. Smalley and his colleagues could have named this allotropic form of carbon "carbosoccer" or "soc-cerene," but they didn t. Instead they called it "buckminster fullerene" after the architect R. Buckminster Fuller, whose geodesic domes vaguely resembled truncated soccer balls. 

To explain the very varied behaviour patterns shown by the various monomers in various solvents, use has been made of a further, hitherto unrealized, implication of the model, namely that the rate of the isomerization-propagation must depend upon the electrochemical environment of the complex. This vague idea has been given precision by concentrating attention on the species which occupies the site at the back-side of the near-planar carbenium ion, the front-side of which is 7t-bonded to the double bond of the monomer. The idea is that the stronger the dipole at the back, the weaker is the Jt-bond, and the lower is the energy of the transition state, and therefore the greater is the rate. 

Planetary nebulas are so named because some of them, when viewed by telescope, vaguely resemble planets. In reality they are a thousand times bigger than the whole Solar System and bear no relation whatever to planets. The most famous among them is the Ring nebula in the constellation of the Lyre (M57 in the Messier catalogue). Other wonderful examples can be found on the Internet at the European Southern Observatory website (see Appendix 8). 

Organometallic compounds are defined as compounds containing a direct link between a carbon atom and a metal. What constitutes a metal for nomenclature purposes is really rather vague. The practice in nomenclature is to consider any element other than C, H and the rare gases to be metals if this is useful. The names of such compounds reflect their constitution and are drawn both from organic nomenclature and from inorganic nomenclatures. The names of organometallic compounds demonstrate that nomenclatures must be unified and adaptable to any situation. 

Since cassiterite is the only important ore of tin, it must have been the earliest source of the metal. Although the Cassiterides, or tin islands, vaguely mentioned by classical writers were usually supposed to have been named for the ore, cassiterite may possibly have been named for the islands, just as copper may have been named for Cyprus and bronze for Brundisium (Brindisi, Italy) (62). Some scholars identify the Cassiterides with the Scilly Isles. In speaking of mirrors, Pliny the Elder stated that the best known to our forefathers were made at Brundisium from a mixture of copper and stagnum (63). 

It has been called the Vague Acid and the Universal Acid. We have been accustomed to meet with it under two distinct Forms and to know it under the Names of two Species These are the Vitriolic and the Muriatic Acid and to these we are lately taught to add a third, which, from the Place where it has been discovered, Authors have called the Swedish Acid and to which some, tho very improperly, have given the Name of the Sparry Acid. Perhaps, in distinction from the other two, it may be better named the Stony Acid (84, 85, 118). 

It will be noted that the term gypsum is used by Theophrastus, as indeed by later ancient writers, to indicate the dehydrated sulphate of lime (plaster of Paris), rather than the mineral (gypsum) from which it is obtained, though he elsewhere alludes somewhat vaguely to certain natural earths under that name. 

Iron is obtained from misy, a yellow, gold-appearing, hard stone (pyrites ). Pliny vaguely describes under the same name a product formed by roasting a copper ore. According to Berthelot, the misy of Pliny is the product of a gentle oxidation of copper pyrites, a mixture of basic sulphates of iron and copper.48... 

Although the subject of some controversy, the Ebers papyrus (1550 BC) appears to be the earliest, largest, and most comprehensive reference to diabetes and describes one of the principal symptoms of the disease, excessive urination. Other scholars consider the discussion sufficiently vague that it may be regarded as a kidney disorder. In the second century AD, however, the condition was described in more detail by Areteus and the focus was on excessive urination, unquenchable thirst, and degradation of tissue. The name diabetes, taken from the Greek, siphon, was adopted, because fluid does not remain in the body. 

Terpenes were originally named after turpentine, the volatile oil from pine trees used in oil painting, whose major constituent is a-pinene. The term was rather vaguely used for all the volatile oily compounds, insoluble in water and usually with resiny smells from plants. The oils distilled from plants, which often contain perfumery or flavouring materials, are called essential oils and these too contain terpenes. Examples include camphor from the camphor tree, used to preserve clothes from moths, humulene from hops, which helps to give beer its flavour, and phytol, found in many plants. 

---