[LQ43]

A trivial question but if I could ask this international community of chemists here to help me out in understanding where this term for the Group 2 elements is used. We had a disagreement with our publisher who was going to provide us with a periodic table with Group 2 elements labelled as Alkali Earth elements

We noticed this "error" and asked for it to be corrected to Alkaline Earth elements. They had already produced thousands of these periodic tables and was reluctant to correct it without charging us for it. They claimed that they found both terms "alkaline earth" and "alkali earth" used for Group 2

I found sources from Russia (?), Japan and Canada with this term but in my experience, this would be incorrect and we would deduct marks from students who used this label for Group 2 elements.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/v50718p5372153p3/
http://sciencelinks.jp/j-east/article/199923/000019992399A0923889.php
http://www.science.uwaterloo.ca/~cchieh/cact/c120/grps128a.html


Has anyone else been educated with this term as correct?

Thanks,

[enahs]

Every periodic chart I ever use says group one is Alkali, and group 2 is Alkaline.

The word "alkali" comes from the Arabic language; ancient Arabian chemists discovered that ashes of certain plants, which they called al-qali, gave water solutions that felt slippery and burned the skin. These ashes contain compounds of Group 1A element that produce alkaline (basic) solutions.


And while I can not find where the IUPAC actually defines Alkali and Alkaline, but both the IUPAC-NIST pooled data clearly use Alkali to define group 1 and Alkaline Earth as group 2.

[Borek]

In Polish - "metale ziem alkalicznych" - "metals of alkaline earth" vs "metale alkaliczne" - "alkali metals", so it is identical.

I have forwarded your question to CHEMED-L, this group has a collective wisdom

[Mitch]

alkaline for group 2 sounds right to me.

[LQ43]

Thanks for all your replies and those on CHEMED-L  . I suppose I cared to ask the question because all questions concerning naming are sources of confusion for students, particularly those in intro chem classes.

It is interesting to note that IUPAC does not define the terms and perhaps the use of "alkali earth" vs "alkaline earth" is cultural much like "aluminum" vs "aluminium", the same but different. Still I think it was worth mentioning if only to be aware of the chemical "dialects" out there.