Australia's Science Forum

FYI Quote taken from Nature.com Thought this was interesting

"It is the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) who deal with questions of nomenclature and naming when it comes to chemical elements and compounds. And so when IUPAC decided that element 16 should be spelled as 'sulfur' — either in 1971 (ref. 1) or 1990 (ref. 2) depending on the source — there should be no argument about whether there should be a 'ph' in there or not. It is not a question of American or Oxford English spelling, it is a given name — and 'correcting' such a name to a different spelling is wholly inappropriate. What would Fred Flintstone say if we insisted on spelling his name Phred Phlintstone! Just to hammer the point home, IUPAC only accepts alternative spellings for two elements, and neither of them is sulfur: 'aluminum' and 'cesium' are fair game, although Nature Chemistry uses aluminium and caesium."

what a load of old fosforus
http://my.rsc.org/forums/viewtopic/39/2567

Aluminium...ahh is it that or is it Aluminum?
USA - they say 'ALUM-IN-UM' . My son lives in USA and, in a conversation on Skype, I corrected his pronunciation to which he picked up a box of foil and pointed out to me the spelling on it.. yes, it is spelt Aluminum on the packet.
So -- is that an Americanism or should I say an americanisium?

It's sulphur on my Ajax container. And sulphuric acid is sulphuric. I could check it on my phone, or is that fone? LOL