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International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry

 

 
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International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry
 
 
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The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) ( or ay-yoo-pec) is a non-governmental organization
Non-governmental organization

Non-governmental organization is a term that has become widely accepted for referring to a legally constituted, non-business organization created by natural or legal persons with no participation or representation of any government....
 established in 1919 for the advancing of chemistry
Chemistry

Chemistry is the science concerned with the composition, structure, and properties of matter, as well as the changes it undergoes during chemical reactions....
. Its members are national chemistry societies. It is the recognized authority in developing standards for the naming of the chemical elements and their compounds, through its Interdivisional Committee on Nomenclature and Symbols (IUPAC nomenclature).






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The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) ( or ay-yoo-pec) is a non-governmental organization
Non-governmental organization

Non-governmental organization is a term that has become widely accepted for referring to a legally constituted, non-business organization created by natural or legal persons with no participation or representation of any government....
 established in 1919 for the advancing of chemistry
Chemistry

Chemistry is the science concerned with the composition, structure, and properties of matter, as well as the changes it undergoes during chemical reactions....
. Its members are national chemistry societies. It is the recognized authority in developing standards for the naming of the chemical elements and their compounds, through its Interdivisional Committee on Nomenclature and Symbols (IUPAC nomenclature). It is a member of the International Council for Science
International Council for Science

The International Council for Science , formerly called the International Council of Scientific Unions, was founded in 1931 as an international non-governmental organization devoted to international co-operation in the advancement of science....
 (ICSU).

In addition to nomenclature guidelines, the IUPAC sets standards for international spelling in the event of a dispute; for example, it ruled that aluminium
Aluminium

Aluminium or aluminum is a silvery white and ductile member of the boron group of chemical elements. It has the symbol Al; its atomic number is 13....
 is preferable to the American
American English

PhonologyIn many ways, compared to English language in England, North American English is conservative in its phonology. Some distinctive accents can be found on the East Coast of the United States , partly because these areas were in contact with England, and imitated prestigious varieties of English English at a time when those varieties we...
 aluminum and American sulfur
Sulfur

Sulfur or sulphur is the chemical element that has the atomic number 16. It is denoted with the symbol S. It is an abundant Valence non-metal....
 is preferable to the British
British English

British English or UK English is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere....
 sulphur.

Many IUPAC publications are available on the Internet
Internet

The Internet is a global network of interconnected computers, enabling users to share information along multiple channels. Typically, a computer that connects to the Internet can access information from a vast array of available server and other computers by moving information from them to the computer's local memory....
. For example, Quantities, Units and Symbols in Physical Chemistry (the "Green Book") can be downloaded, while Compendium of Chemical Terminology (the "Gold Book") is searchable online.

An important IUPAC supplement ("Recommendations for nomenclature and tables in biochemical thermodynamics, 1994") is available at http://www.chem.qmul.ac.uk/iubmb/thermod/.

As the introduction to the proposed 3rd edition points out, the failure to use standardized units can result in disastrous consequences, illustrated by the loss of NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter
Mars Climate Orbiter

The Mars Climate Orbiter was one of two spacecraft in the Mars Surveyor '98 program, the other being the Mars Polar Lander . The two missions were to study the Mars weather, climate, and water and carbon dioxide budget, in order to understand the reservoirs, behavior, and atmospheric role of volatiles and to search for evidence of long-te...
.

See also

  • Element naming controversy
    Element naming controversy

    The names for the chemical elements 104 to 109 were the subject of a major controversy starting in the 1960s which was finally resolved in 1997....
  • International Chemical Identifier
    International Chemical Identifier

    The IUPAC International Chemical Identifier is a textual identifier for chemical substances, designed to provide a standard and human-readable way to encode molecular information and to facilitate the search for such information in databases and on the web....
     (InChI)
  • Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements
    Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements

    The Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements or IRMM, located in Geel, Belgium, is one of the seven institutes of the Joint Research Centre , a Directorate-General of the European Commission ....
     (IRMM)
  • National Institute of Standards and Technology
    National Institute of Standards and Technology

    The National Institute of Standards and Technology , known between 1901 and 1988 as the National Bureau of Standards , is a measurement standards laboratory which is a non-regulatory agency of the United States Department of Commerce....
     (NIST)
  • International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry nomenclature
  • European Association for Chemical and Molecular Sciences
    European Association for Chemical and Molecular Sciences

    The European Association for Chemical and Molecular Sciences is a Europe non-profit organisation which works on promoting colaboration between non-profit scientific and technical societies in the field of chemistry....


External links