Crossword Knowledge 11 - Chemical elements

I made a rash assumption that the elements of the periodic table would be similar in Polish and how wrong I was.

Clue: Z wodorem tworzy amoniak - with hydrogen makes ammonia.

Well, the compound ammonia is a similar word and the word for hydrogen at least has the same kind of route origin as our word.  Hydrogen means water generating, wodór comes from wodoród from wodo-rodu again meaning water generating / producing / birthing.

From school chemistry, I know the answer is nitrogen, because ammonia is only made of hydrogen and nitrogen.  However, there's only space for four letters and the first letter is A.  I'm going to have to look this one up.

Answer: Azot

Clearly, I am going to have to brush up on some elements that I might commonly come across is everyday life and my work in medicine.  Firstly, chemical element is pierwiastek chemiczny.  Now for some of their names:


Azot - Nitrogen        Azot, from the French Azote which itself is from the Greek for not-life

Wodór - Hydrogen

Tlen - Oxygen          Logically derived from tleć, to smoulder

Węgiel - Carbon      Węglan is carbonate as in węglan sodu for sodium carbonate. Which brings us to...

Sód - Sodium            easy enough to remember 

Chlor - chlorine        ditto

Potas - Potassium     again

Wapń - Calcium         ooo, what's this? No idea of etymology but from this we get the Polish word for limestone, wapień

Żelazo - iron              the etymology won't help me remember the word, but with a k squeezed in, we can iron our clothes with a żelazko. 

Glin - aluminium        Clay minerals are hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, which is why the word glin comes from the word for clay, glina. 

Cyna - tin                   not too different if you think of the pronunciation of the letter c. 

Srebro - Silver           OK now I'm visualising the silvery apparatus on Prof Xavier's head (just careful of spelling)

Złoto - gold                Should be easy enough to remember, because of the link to currency.

Miedź - copper          etymology has various theories but think of the copper colour of mead or honey to remember the word. 

Siarka - sulfur            note the related words siarczan (sulphate); siarczek (sulfide); siarczyn (sulfite); siarkowy (sulphuric)

Hel - helium               this made me wonder whether the Hel peninsula was named after the Greek sun god, Helios, as well, but aparently not.



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