Nandor's Exhaustive Chemical Words Pages
Factoids

These "Chemmical Words" pages are based on English words that can be spelled using element symbols as "letters." The lists are good through the beginning of 2018. Now that the 7th period of the Periodic Table has been completely named, I surmise that at most we will ever discover the first two elements in period 8 (which would complete the S shell). But I digress. The reason I choose the date 2018 is that this is the date of the most recent editions of the ENABLE and SOWPODS word lists.

These pages are rather bare-bones, but I thought I might include here a few items that caught MY interest, anyway.

Interesting Facts: 

The longest word you can spell with chemical symbols is "nonrepresentationalisms," which can be spelled four different ways with symbols, one of which is "NoNRePReSeNTaTiONaLiSmS." 

There is a tie for longest words if only unique chemical symbols may be used (that is, no symbol is used more than once):  "hypercoagulabilities" and "hyperconsciousnesses" ("HYPErCoAgULaBiLiTiEs" and "HYPErCoNScIOUSnEsSeS"). 

The first word alphabetically is "acacias" ("AcAcIAs"), the plural of a type of shrub.

The last word alphabetically is "ywis" ("YWIS"), a Middle-English way of saying "certainly."

There are two words tied for having the largest number of different spellings with symbols:  each of "innocuousnesses" and "inconspicuousnesses" can be spelled in 48 different ways.  Wow!

The only elements that can be spelled using chemical symbols are:

Note that the only elements that require the use of repeated chemical symbols are copper and phosphorus.  Also: arsenic, copper, iron, silver, and tin cannot be spelled with their own chemical symbols.

And finally, here are some other lists with properties that may tickle your fancy... or not. But they're here anyway ;-)

1. A list of all English words (32,568 of them) that can be spelled with distinct chemical symbols (so "papa" is not allowed since it would take a repeat of Pa to spell it).  [list]

1a. A list of all of the spellings of those words (51,008 ways).  [list]

2. A list of all spellings of English words (2166 of them) that can be spelled solely using one-character chemical symbols.  [list]

3. A list of all spellings of English words (813 of them) that can be spelled solely using distinct one-character chemical symbols (so "bib" is not allowed since it would take a repeat of B to spell it).  [list]

4. A list of all spellings of English words (2398 of them) that can be spelled solely using two-character chemical symbols.  [list]

5. A list of all spellings of English words (2262 of them) that can be spelled solely using distinct two-character chemical symbols (so "papa" is not allowed since it would take a repeat of Pa to spell it).   [list]

If you use this page in your classroom, &c., please reference me! Also, if you like these pages or have anything interesting that you think should be added, drop me a line:  mark@nandor.org

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Dr. Nandor was most recently a mathematics teacher and former Upper School Head at The Wellington School.  Here is his home page.