Tuesday, August 22, 2017

open ended - The Longest Word Made from Chemical Symbols




So, as you probably know, each and every element in the Periodic Table has its own unique chemical symbol, which is either one, two, or three letters long. For instance, Oxygen is represented as O and Copper as Cu. So how about combining these symbols to form words?


For instance, Barium and Neodymium would give us Band, or Chlorine-Americium-Phosphorus would give us Clamp. So how long can these words get? I've managed the following examples:




Bromine-Oxygen-Carbon-Cobalt-Lithium: Broccoli (8)


Boron-Iodine-Carbon-Yttrium-Chlorine-Einsteinium: Bicycles (8)


Thorium-Uranium-Neodymium-Erbium-Oxygen-Uranium-Sulphur: Thunderous (10)



So, community, can you beat my attempts? For clarification, I will allow any word on dictionary.com, including alternate forms of the word (plurals, verb conjugations, etc.). The word must be constructed using only chemical symbols that are recognised according to the Wikipedia page. You may use any symbol as many times as you like in your word.


Victory will go to the person who can give the longest word in characters, not the word made from the most symbols.



Answer



One of my favourite words, that's 29 characters long is:



Floccinaucinihilipilification - the estimation of something as being worthless.




It's quite useful for describing what the contestants find on a fair few reality TV programmes! As most of the letters are covered off by only a few elements there's quite a lot of repetition...



Fl - Flerovium
O - Oxygen
C - Carbon
C - Carbon
I - Iodine
N - Nitrogen
Au - Gold

C - Carbon
I - Iodine
N - Nitrogen
I - Iodine
H - Hydrogen
I - Iodine
Li - Lithium
P - Phosphorus
I - Iodine
Li - Lithium

F - Fluorine
I - Iodine
C - Carbon
At - Astatine
I - Iodine
O - Oxygen
N - Nitrogen



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