Pointless rant, but a rant nontheless.

The newly named element 112 - Copernicium (Cp).

I have no issue with properly naming a new element. I have no issue with naming it after a scientiest of the past (Nicolaus Copernicus). What I do have an issue with is the fact it's going to have an official abbreviation (Cp) that is already widely used in Chemistry.

Cp is used to represent cyclopentadienyl, a widely used compound. I don't think the use of Cp is official in IUPACs eyes but everyone uses it. Similar to using Me for Methyl and Bu for Butyl. It seems even more odd since Cp is generally used to bond to metals for various reasons, so if someone in the future happened to assume it was actually copernicium then there would be massive confusion.

Anyway, pointless rant over.

There would also likely be a massive explosion, Cp (the element) is not very stable, is it? Realistically, is it going to cause that much confusion? ARe people going to be confused as to whether you're using Cp, a widely used and well-known compound, or Cp, a totally unstable and esoteric element that only a few people have seen vague evidence of?

:Y

Its the largest element currently known.
Until its officialy named, I think its still ununpentium (i.e. 115, its number in the periodic table)

As such a large element, its very very unstable and as far a I know, hasn't existed for more than a few fractions of a second, and even then that's only under laboratory conditions.

My life is hard, I suffer lots

Is that all? I thought they would have got further than that by now!

Wayne, dunno if its icky, but its so radioactive that if it was available in any sort of quantity it'd probably have a nice green glow.

My life is hard, I suffer lots

I've got my spade out.

Turns out IUPAC decided Cp was a bad symbol for it, one of the reasons being the reason I gave in post 1, so they've gone for Cn instead. I'm much happier about the whole issue now.