CuNT: Copper nanotubes. The most unfortunate scientific name of all time, or the very best?
I hear the word nanotube and my mind goes to carbon nanotubes, as may yours. Most of the nanotubes we've heard or read about have been made of carbon, so it's a natural connection. "Nanotube" in most people's minds also means they're made of carbon, which ain't necessarily so. Cue a few Chinese researchers, YingNi Duan, JianMin Zhang and KeWei Xu, researching copper nanotubes. Because many in the field abbreviate nanotube to NT, they made reference to their copper nanoubes as "CuNT", i.e. nanotubes of Cu, the chemical abbreviation for copper. Unfortunately, if hilariously, several people picked up on this, which was mentioned in their paper "Structural and electronic properties of chiral single-wall copper nanotubes" thus:
…The structural, energetic and electronic properties of chiral (n, m) (3⩽n⩽6, n/2⩽m⩽n) single-wall copper nanotubes (CuNTs) have been investigated by using projector-augmented wave method based on density-functional theory. The (4, 3) CuNT is energetically stable and should be observed experimentally in both free-standing and tip-suspended conditions, whereas the (5, 5) and (6, 4) CuNTs should be observed in free-standing and tip-suspended conditions, respectively.…
"I study tip-suspended CuNTs"… Uncomfortable laughter echoes around Western scientists' circles as the CuNT news doubtless became public; I can imagine i becoming quite the meme and poster child for care in naming things, for all time.The Chinese are also apprenly researching Bismuth nanotubes. biNT, anyone? SLighly less challenging, still slightly suspect.
The above-named innocents can hardly be blamed for this faux pas, ignorant as they no doubt are regarding English rude words (I'm fairly certain that very few (if any) science training includes a warning about he potential of naming things for foreign rude words. The reverse could equally be true for any non-Chinese scientist inadvertently naming something shameful to a Chinese reader, so we shouldn't be too hard on them. I feel fremdscham for them all, no doubt they're throughly embarrassed by the whole thing.
Link to the paper Structural and electronic properties of chiral single-wall copper nanotubes
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296 when written for BQ25