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Info from "Friendship One" (spoilers)
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Timo: [QB] Here's a belated reply to Daniel, about the "chemobabble": The difference between "dilithiumdiallosilicateheptaferranide" and "lithiumallosilicateferranide" is minimal. All that is done to shorten the former into the latter is omission of the prefices that state how many atoms of each element are included in the molecule (or in this case, in a basic cell of the crystalline structure). This is standard chemical practice. For example, a chemist always speaks of "erbium oxide", never of "dierbium trioxide", even though the latter is formally more correct. Sure, there are two ("di") Er atoms and three ("tri") O atoms in the stuff, but the chemist already knows that the only possible way for Er and O to combine here is to have two of the former and three of the latter. So the prefices di and tri are never used. In the case of some other substances, it is not quite that obvious how many atoms of each element there are present, so different people insert a different amount of prefices (but seldom all of them, unless they want to be super-pedantic). I guess this is what could be happening with dilithium/lithium as well. Some people feel that it's sufficient to just say "lithium" and "crystal", because any chemist would realize that lithium cannot form crystals unless it is part of a special molecule like this, and any starship engineer would realize that only one special lithium-containing molecule is of commercial worth. Other people feel the need to be pedantic, since they know there are other crystalline structures that involve not two, but one or three lithium atoms in the basic cell. But since "paralithium" and "trilithium" are commercially seldom used in the Federation, not everybody sees the logic of separating these from "dilithium" by the explicit use of the prefix. Perhaps dilithium was used for warp drives and m/am power release control from day one, but practical uses for paralithium and trilithium were invented only roughly during TOS. Thus, the need to differentiate between the various lithium-containing crystals did not emerge until Kirk's time, and the verbal practice was slowly changed during that time. Timo Saloniemi [/QB][/QUOTE]
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