Letters: January 2022
Readers reminisce, consider the limits of trust and continue the debate on chemical nomenclature
A million meanings
I was interested in the ‘On the spot’ item that depicts what is described as Natural Organic Cat Litter. A quick look on the internet indicated that this indeed was organic as defined in chemistry textbooks. This contrasts with my recently purchased ‘organic’ slug pellets containing ferric phosphate, which when I was a student would have been regarded as inorganic! I suppose this is just another example of how the use of words changes with time and one word can have several meanings. A similar change seems to have happened for the symbol for a million. In science a million would be ‘M’ (for example, MW for megawatt, a million Watts) but the media almost always use ‘m’ when talking about millions of pounds money, for example, £1m, which could be interpreted as 0.1p – one thousandth of a pound. Such is progress in clarity and consistency.
John Wilkins
Reading, UK