Chemical Forums
Chemistry Forums for Students => Undergraduate General Chemistry Forum => Topic started by: Cyewzickk on March 26, 2008, 04:03:42 PM
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whats the symbol for water?>!>!>!>!>!??!!>?!>!
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Formula, not symbol. Googling for water formula gives over 6 million hits.
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The symbol would depend on the application. In contemporary chemistry, we like to diagram the atoms that make up a molecule, and we do it this way -- H2O Maybe alchemists had a symbol for water, like they did for each of the metals they knew about, but that's not a contemporary application.
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Alchemists... That will be inverted triangle.
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When I was a kid, there was a book in the public library on alchemy. I read half of it before I realized, that in addition to giving the history, it also explained to process, seriously, as if it could be performed -- distilato, putrifacto, the son births the father, all that jazz. Of course, these days, with the New Age resurgence, and the random publishing of anonymous texts on the internet, such an attitude is hardly shocking, but I was pretty stunned, at the time. And yes, that book is still there, but the one I want -- not so much.