Friday, April 09, 2010

The right formula


Message to a heedless world: Please remember that the O in the formula H2O is a capital O meaning oxygen, not a zero meaning zero. Water is composed of hydrogen and oxygen, not hydrogen and nothing.

Heedless world replies: Get a life, man.

Heedless world continues (after some thought): How do you know the difference anyway?

Me: Zeros are narrower.

Heedless world: This is truly sad.

4 comments:

Gam said...

Google "H2O" (H-Two-Letter O): 25,600,000 results

Google "H20" (H-Two-Zero): 13,300,000 results

Does that make you cry a little on the inside?

Philip Ball said...

Oh William, and I was having such a nice Friday night...

Anonymous said...

the adjective "heedless" is appropo here. there are many who, not so preoccupied with mere survival and therefore can pay attention to the world around them, nevertheless choose to focus on matters just beyond their skin. they say: "get a life" to someone who points out the danger signs all around us and harkens for everyone to become motivated by those signs to help save us all from our collective doom due to our collective irresponsibility

Unknown said...

There are obviously many ways to skin a rabbit as the saying goes. I just wonder, what would be water like, if we accept Ostwald's energetics, which does not have any need for atoms and molecules, but only recognizes Energy. We may arrive at a completely different science...