[due to complaints, this post *will* contain links - but not many, if any]

I always thought of Chemists as mild mannered scientists in white lab coats, working industriously in their laboratories. Turns out, I'm completely right. But something I didn't know about Chemists, is that they fight about stuff. Mostly, who discovered something, but even more passionately: what to name what they've discovered. Seems there's a whole organisation dedicated to sorting out these raging arguments over naming stuff. They don't like when scientists name elements after other living scientists (seaborgium), or when they want to name them after their cats (tiddlesibium).

I found out all about the Secret Lives of Chemists while reading about the Transfermium Elements (elements with an atomic number of 101 or higher) and more specifically, element 104 - Rutherfordium.

So there's this long to-ing and fro-ing back and forthing about the names and who can name what what and all that - but we then get to the interesting bit. A neato naming convention. It was decided, that elements be named solely on their atomic number - no more of this "I want to name this new element after my cat" stuff. So, if 0 was 'nil' and 1 was 'un', 2 would be 'bi', 3 'tri', 4 'quad' and 5 'pent', 6 would be 'hex' [pretty straight forward] and 7 'sept', 8 'oct', and 9'd be 'enn'. They're all metals so their names end i 'ium. And we're away laughing.

Element 104 would now be unnilquadium, Element 105 and 106 would be unnilpentium and unnilhexium respectively. But, wait, there's more: Unununium!! see? oh man, what a knee-slapper! oh man, who knew chemists were so *funny* and it's all the more funnier because it's true! How about Ununennium? yeh? great isn't it? It's a sad thing that we're leaving the Uns because they were such great value. I'm sure that Unbinilium and Unbiunium'll be just as much fun once they get here. Can't stand in the way of science, afterall - those chemist'sll deck ya.