Science in Sanskrit

 Train Terms in Sanskrit This is a joyous article for me to write because I love  trains. Ever since I was a child watching Thomas or Chugginton or frequently checking out books about trains from the school library, I never stopped being fascinated by trains. I will admit, it has been years since my last "I like trains" phase, but I hope by writing this article, I will revisit it. Trains in India have a gloomy history, associated with the British colonization, but that won't stop me from coining Sanskrit words for railway terminology. Now, it turns out that many relevant words have neologisms already coined, thus my work will be relatively easy.  Now many Indian languages have borrowed the English word "rail" to refer to trains or the rails. In Telugu, a train is called " railu ", and in Hindi it is called " railgadi ". There already exists a neologism in Sanskrit for train , which is " रेलयान ". The word " रेल " will be t...

 Bacteria in Sanskrit In this blog, I will name some of the famous bacteria in Sanskrit as well as even go over the parts of a plasmid. I am a biological engineering major, so this blog post was exciting for me to write. Microbiology is a vast field, meaning there is only so much I can cover in a single blog post Bacteria There already exists a neologism for "bacterium" in modern Indian languages, which is  जीवाणु,  which means "smallest life form", a very fitting name.  There are three main forms of Bacteria that we shall explore. The first is spherical ( coccus ), thus  गोलक​ . The second is the stereotypical rod shapped bacteria ( baccilus ), thus वेत्रक .​ The third is spiral shaped , thus आवर्तक ​ . Bacteria can also be divided into two main groups, Gram Negative and Gram Positive. The former have thin Peptidoglycan in their cell wall so when stained with Crystal Violet, they don't show up purple. The latter have thick Peptidoglycan in their cell wall, so t...

Organic Chemicals in Sanskrit This is the first part in a prospective series of blog posts where I coin some chemical names in Sanskrit. This may be sugars, acids, proteins, etc. In this blog, I will be naming the sugars and the some of the Amines, Alcohols, and Alkanes. The idea is to move away from English words in Indian langauges, while not sacrificing unity. However, I do recomend trying to translate these words into vernacular languages as much as possible, because ultimately we want people to understand science and not get tripped up by jargon. Element Roots In oder to say sutuff like "hydro-" pr "chloro-" or "carbo-". it is necessary that we have short hand froms of the elements. This is so we can make words that are less syllables. Here is a short list. I will make a longer one later: Hydrogen (उद्रजन​ ):  उदक्य​ Carbon (अङ्गर​ ):  अङ्गर​ Chlorine (हरित-द्रव्य​):  हरि Oxygen ( प्राणजन​ ):  प्रान्य​ Nitrogen (सोरजन​ ):  सोर्य ​Phosphorous: (भास्वर...

 Cetecean Taxonomy Ignorance is calling an Orca a whale, knowledge is calling it a dolphin, but erudition is knowing that an Orca is a whale. A whale is a anything of the infraorder Ceteacea. Thus the Blue Whale, a Harbour Porpoise, the Sperm Whale and an Amazonian River Dolphin are whales! My favourite fun fact about whales is that they are of the order Artiodactyla ( युग्मङ्गुलिन् ), together with cows, pigs, deer, and hippopotamuses. We shall be translating the cetecean taxa into Sanskrit! The infraorder Cetecea is simply "whale" which in Sanskrit is  तिमि . There are two types of whales, Baleen Whales and Toothed Whales. The former is the parvorder Mysticeti  and the latter is Odontoceti . I shall name the Baleen Whales as "filter mouth whales" or  शोधन्यास्यतिमि  and the latter as "tooth whales" or  दन्ततिमि . There are four families in Mysticeti: Balaenidae, Neob alaenidae,  Balaenopteridae, Eschrichitiidae.  The first we shall look at is...