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2024
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Understanding 'Carbon' and 'Coke' in the Graphite Industry!
In carbon literature, currently, carbon with the radical 'stone' and carbon without it are often used interchangeably, without distinction. For example, terms like carbon, carbon black, carbon graphite materials, carbon factories, etc., can often be swapped. This mixed usage can sometimes lead to ambiguous or even confusing meanings. For instance, in the sentence 'the carbon obtained from this has a higher sulfur content and a lower carbon content,' the first 'carbon' refers to carbon materials, while the second 'carbon' refers to the carbon element. For those familiar with carbon, this meaning is clear at a glance, but for someone with general chemistry knowledge who is unfamiliar with carbon materials, it can be difficult to understand. The two 'carbons' in this sentence are the same character, and if understood as the same entity—either both as the carbon element or both as carbon materials—then from a chemical perspective, the sentence does not make sense. Similarly, the term 'carbon bridge' can refer to the carbon chain between two groups or atoms in organic chemistry, or it can refer to the binder carbon between coke aggregates, which can easily lead to misunderstandings. The distinction between the characters for carbon and carbon with the radical 'stone' and how to use them has attracted attention in the academic carbon community in recent years; colleagues from planning and design institutes have raised this issue, and Professor Chen Weiran from Hunan University has also made some suggestions. Here, I intend to first clarify the etymology of these two characters and conduct an investigation into their actual usage, and then discuss how to distinguish and use them.
Carbon with the radical 'stone' is clearly a new character coined by chemists when translating the sixth element of the periodic table.
When exactly was the character for carbon created by the chemical Cangjie? The translation of Western modern chemical works in our country began with Xu Shou. Xu Shou (1818–1884), courtesy name Xuecun, from Wuxi, Jiangsu, was a pioneer and outstanding innovator in modern Chinese chemistry. He collaborated with the Englishman John Fryer (1839-1928) to introduce and translate: 'Principles of Chemistry' in six volumes (published in 1871), 'Supplement to Principles of Chemistry' in twenty-four volumes (published in 1874), 'Addendum to Principles of Chemistry' in six volumes (published in 1879), 'Chemical Analysis' in eight volumes (published in 1872), 'Chemical Qualities' in eight volumes (published in 1883), 'Chemical Quantities' in sixteen volumes (published in 1883), 'Changes in Matter When Heated' in ten volumes (published in 1899), 'Forensic Medicine' in twenty-six volumes (published in 1899), etc. Among them, the earliest translated work, 'Principles of Chemistry' (Wells’ Principle and Applications of Chemistry), was originally published in 1858 in New York and Chicago. Thirteen years later, it was translated by Xu Shou and Fryer at the Jiangnan Arsenal Translation Institute. This book had a significant impact on the Chinese chemistry community, and thirty years later, the book 'The Connection of Eastern and Western Learning' referred to it as a classic. This was the earliest systematic introduction of Western modern chemistry in our country. At the same time as the Jiangnan Arsenal began translating 'Principles of Chemistry,' American physician Kerr John Gla and Chinese scholar He Liaoran also co-translated this book, titled 'Introduction to Chemistry' in four volumes, published in the ninth year of the Tongzhi era (1870), which was slightly simpler than 'Principles of Chemistry' but published a year earlier. At that time, 64 elements were known, and the names of the elements in both 'Principles' and 'Introduction' were generally the same. Metallic elements were prefixed with 'metal,' such as barium, manganese, magnesium, lithium, etc., which are still in use today. However, non-metallic elements were not all prefixed with 'stone,' such as phosphorus, which was translated as 'lin' in both books; silicon, which was translated as 'bo' in 'Introduction' and 'xi' in 'Principles'; hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, which were translated as 'qing,' 'dan,' and 'yang' in 'Introduction' and 'qingqi,' 'danqi,' and 'yangqi' in 'Principles.' Notably, for the element carbon, both books translated it as 'tan,' without adding the radical 'stone.' At this time, the character 'tan' was equivalent to 'carbon' in modern English, serving dual purposes, referring both to carbon materials and to the carbon element. The rule of adding 'stone' to non-metallic elements seems not to have been established at that time.
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