Where’s Atom? A Search for the Origin of the Atom - Chapter 1
- PenName Protection
- Dec 7, 2024
- 6 min read
The Oxford Essential Dictionary: American Edition
While searching for better online resources for etymology and ancient languages, I suddenly remembered I had an old dictionary on my bookshelf.
Not that old, mind you; it is a copy of the Berkley edition of The Oxford Essential Dictionary, published in 1998. Based on the sticker on the back, I’m guessing I acquired it when purchasing my first set of college texts from a used bookstore in 2000.
Hoping it would contain something that the online search engines fail to produce in my results pages, I pulled the book off the shelf and could instantly see, smell, and touch its history.
Honestly, for me, there is nothing like the smell of an old book; its musty pages unlock a specific string of nostalgia like nothing else can. And it saddens me to think of all the people living virtually today who may never know that smell, who may never relate to this sentiment.
I opened the creased, torn, stained, scratched-up cover and began turning the rough and cockled pages. After noting the reference was a quarter-century old (and grimacing about my own age), I was fascinated with the Contents page. How curious it was that, after years of toting this book around, I had forgotten there was a unique section of information providing more than definitions of words between the covers.
The Special Reference Sections
Having adapted to the “niche” world we live in today, the final 30 pages of this dictionary are a seemingly eclectic grouping of information, yet definitions all the same. The sections are as follows:
Standard Weights and Measures with Metric Equivalents
Conversion from Standard to Metric Measurements
Metric Weights and Measures with Standard measurements
Signs and Symbols
Temperature
Heat Index
Windchill Temperatures
Mathematical Notation
Multiplication Tables
Arabic and Roman Numerals
Greek Alphabet
Books in the Bible
Terms for Groups of Animals, etc.
Chemical Elements
Presidents of the United States of America
Leaders and Rulers
States of the United States of America
Area Codes
Countries of the World
Time Periods
Wedding Anniversary Gifts
As it were, some fascinating material was uncovered on these pages.
I skimmed over the Weights and Measurements sections, soon donning a furrowed brow as the gears turning in my brain, once again, tried to figure out how or why we deviated from the metric system, yet I continued on.
Reading through the Signs and Symbols, I was surprised to see “&c” as the general sign for “et cetera (and so forth),” as I’ve only ever used and seen used “etc.” for this. But then, I rationalized that I obviously wasn’t the only person who was unable to write an acceptable-looking ampersand, and I continued on.
The next thing to catch my eye was the symbol “℞,” the symbol used for prescriptions or medicines, which, I was unaware, stands for “take.” Yet, the more interesting note was that it was derived from the Latin word for “recipe.” (There is much to go into here, but for now, that was just a fun find confirming to me that medicine is just a botched, devolved, depraved form of alchemy, so I continued on.)
I also found entertainment in seeing the “#” symbol, as this denoted “number” when before a figure, “pounds” (in weight) when after a figure, or “space” when used for printing; the recently adopted cringe of “hashtag” still over two decades away from tainting the record. The “@” symbol was also now dated, having been noted under the Commerce and Finance portion of this section as meaning “at the rate of.”
As I continued turning the pages, unanswered questions, long-forgotten, broke free of the repressive chains holding them back in the depths of my subconscious to make a grand re-entrance onto the scene. Questions such as, Why is Fahrenheit a thing?... Did we manifest the concept of financial debt to life when we imagined negative numbers?... And can someone tell me how the hell windchill makes sense?!
A Brief Tangent
I looked up the formula for windchill... Shall we?
The National Weather Service's formula to calculate wind chill in Fahrenheit is: 35.74 + 0.6215T – 35.75(V0.16) + 0.4275T(V0.16), where T represents air temperature in Fahrenheit and V represents wind speed in miles per hour.
(Got it?...)
This is the result of numerous updates and modifications adapted from the original formula: WCI = (10 √v - v + 10.5) - (33Ta); WCI = wind chill index, kg⋅cal/m²/h, v = wind velocity, m/s, and Ta = air temperature, °C.
(Hmmm, I see…)
Wikipedia states that “many formulas exist for wind chill because, unlike temperature, wind chill has no universally agreed-upon standard definition or measurement. All the formulas attempt to qualitatively predict the effect of wind on the temperature humans perceive.”
(So…we’re still guessing. We’re still “collecting data” on this one…)
The original formula for calculating wind chill was discovered by Paul A. Siple, an Antarctic explorer, and Charles Passel, a polar scientist, in 1945…(Yep, that’s enough for me. But, just for poops and chuckles, let’s continue.)
They conducted an experiment by observing 250 plastic bottles filled with water and suspending them in the wind on the expedition hut roof, at the same level as the anemometer. From this, they measured how quickly the water loses heat and developed the first wind chill formulas and tables.
(Sigh…how are we to take this seriously?)
Atomic Number
I continued turning pages, every list containing at least a small point of interest warranting pause until I reached Chemical Elements. The last time I saw the periodic table of elements was the year this dictionary was published, and many of the elements sounded unfamiliar.
I briefly scanned through the alphabetized list before my eyes shifted over to the atomic number column. After a failed attempt to retrieve from my memory the once-provided knowledge of what an atomic number represents (the number of atoms in an element?), I remembered that I was reading a dictionary. I could look it up immediately without a computer – just like the good ol’ days!
Realizing I could also look up the definition of “atom” to see if and how it may have changed in the last 25 years, my inner geek kicked into full gear.
I flipped the book back over, lifted a chunk of pages, and began leafing through the A words. And there it was, on page 34:
a·tom·ic /ətómik/ adj 1 concerned with or using atomic energy or atomic bombs. 2 of atoms. ◻ atomic bomb = atom bomb. atomic energy, nuclear energy. atomic number, number of protons in a nucleus of an atom. atomic weight ratio of the average mass of one atom of an element to one twelfth of the mass of an atom of carbon-12. ◻◻ a·tom´i·cal·ly adv.
Well, we have quite a bit to unpack there, don’t we?
For starters, we don’t get the “obvious”/literal breakdown for the word’s meaning, “of atoms,” first but second; instead, we are hit with fear right off the bat. When you read atomic, your subconscious sees “concerned with using atomic bombs.”
Just in case you were at all unsure about that, we are then given the cross reference for the idiom, ‘atomic bomb,’ of ‘atom bomb.’ And for good measure, we are told that atomic energy is synonymous with nuclear energy.
So, if, like me, you were taught about nuclear war before learning about a nucleus or nuclear reactions, this is helping to create a subconscious correlation between the word atomic and nuclear war, reminding you that the very essence of life is in the hands of a few deranged world leaders. (But I digress…)
Moving on… I got my answer for atomic number: the number of protons in a nucleus of an atom. As a bonus, the definition of atomic weight is also provided (and requires its own dissection, which I will not be doing at this time because, holy crap, WTF is going on there, IDK...).
So, okay…
At this point, I’ve realized that any academic knowledge I still retain is spotty at best. Not only had I misremembered what an atomic number is, but I had also forgotten that protons, electrons, and a nucleus comprised an atom. All I could remember from my academic days was that atoms are “the building blocks of matter,” so… why is an atom not made of itself?
Just like that, I was hit with a tidal wave of memories. My brain was flooded with all the noise that was inside my head for the 15 years I had suffered in the land of Academia; Poorly constructed explanations of seemingly contradicting language poised to bemuse, confuse, and defuse the masses.
I felt I had to get to the bottom of this and asked the dictionary, “Ok, so what is the definition of ‘atom’?” I moved my eyes up the page to the previous entry: “atmosphere.” Wait, what? I moved my eyes back down: “atomic.” And below that: “atomize.” Back up: “atomic,” “atmosphere.”
What the hell? Where’s the entry for “atom”?
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