Chemistry in the Mirror of Czech Language

Abstract

The popularity of natural sciences, in particular chemistry, was assessed by detailed text analysis using the Czech National Corpus. The results showed that chemistry is the second-most popular science, followed by ecology. The popularity of chemical elements, alloys, polymers, oxides, and acids was studied and the most common adjectives and nouns associated with these items were found. The effects of current trends, language history and inertia on how chemistry is perceived by average population are discussed. It was shown that trivial (traditional) nomenclature cannot be removed from chemistry education, as some trivial names persist in common language. It was concluded that full-text databases are still unsatisfactory with respect to the needs of chemical searchers and specialised chemical databases remain irreplaceable.