What is the most common element on the internet?
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You've seen lists before of the most common elements in the universe, most common in the earth's crust, in the human body and so on. About two years ago I decided to find out which elements most frequently name-checked on web pages. So, using the traditional yardstick of approximate number of Google search hits, I entered the names of each of the first 112 elements one-by-one, recorded the counts, and sorted the list in descending order.
1. gold
2. tin
3. iron
4. platinum
5. aluminum
6. silver
7. copper
8. neon
9. lead
10. silicon
11. oxygen
12. nickel
13. zinc
14. sodium
15. calcium
16. radium
17. carbon
18. cobalt
19. hydrogen
20. nitrogen
21. mercury
22. magnesium
23. palladium
24. titanium
25. uranium
26. chromium
27. argon
28. chlorine
29. sulfur
30. lithium
31. cadmium
32. selenium
33. manganese
34. phosphorus
35. rhodium
36. iodine
37. arsenic
38. xenon
39. boron
40. potassium
41. helium
42. krypton
43. barium
44. vanadium
45. molybdenum
46. zirconium
47. neodymium
48. tantalum
49. germanium
50. strontium
51. thorium
52. bismuth
53. antimony
54. gallium
55. tungsten
56. beryllium
57. technetium
58. ruthenium
59. bromine
60. cesium
61. niobium
62. iridium
63. scandium
64. radon
65. yttrium
66. thallium
67. promethium
68. cerium
69. gadolinium
70. osmium
71. erbium
72. lanthanum
73. rubidium
74. tellurium
75. polonium
76. samarium
77. rhenium
78. hafnium
79. plutonium
80. indium
81. fluorine
82. actinium
83. ytterbium
84. holmium
85. thulium
86. terbium
87. astatine
88. dysprosium
89. lutetium
90. americium
91. praseodymium
92. neptunium
93. francium
94. nobelium
95. einsteinium
96. berkelium
97. californium
98. protactinium
99. lawrencium
100. dubnium
101. rutherfordium
102. mendelevium
103. seaborgium
104. europium
105. roentgenium
106. hassium
107. meitnerium
108. curium
109. copernicium
110. bohrium
111. fermium
112. darmstadtiumRankings will naturally fluctuate over time as pages change, but not to an extent to invalidate the whole enterprise. Further factors that were ignored to simplify the process:
- I used only the American spelling for sulfur, cesium and aluminum. Combining hits for the British spellings would falsely increase the number of hits because pages that give both versions would get counted twice.
- I also passed over searching separately for combining forms like "chloride".
- More important, I didn't look for alternative or deprecated names like "wolfram" for "tungsten", "masurium" or "scientium" for "technetium", "brimstone" for "sulfur", or "eka-aluminum" for "gallium". Sue me.
- Certain words have meanings with little or no relation to the element: "mercury" and "krypton" are also planets (and the former is a brand of automobile, as is "neon"), "lead" is something you do when you dance, "palladium" is a place where dancing takes place, "iron" is what you do to your tuxedo shirt before you go out dancing, etc. I chose to leave these in the counts; in most cases the top hits for even common words were nevertheless the Wikipedia articles on the associated elements.
So there you have it. Gold may be a precious and sought-after commodity most places, but on the internet it's twice as common as tin.
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@da Doctah said:
So there you have it. Gold may be a precious and sought-after commodity most places, but on the internet it's twice as common as tin.
At current count, there are 4,660,000,000 pages that contain the word "gold" but do not contain the word "metal". It can also stand for The Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease or Genomes OnLine Database or "gold standard", which has absolutely nothing to do with metals.
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Are you taking the density co-efficient into account? A webpage of gold does not weigh the same as a webpage of selenium.
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@Ben L. said:
"gold standard", which has absolutely nothing to do with metals.
So. Proof that the American High School Education continues to decline in value?
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@da Doctah said:
I used only the American spelling for sulfur, cesium and aluminum. Combining hits for the British spellings would falsely increase the number of hits because pages that give both versions would get counted twice.
+"cesium" -"caesium"
+"caesium" -"cesium"
+"cesium" +"caesium"
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@boomzilla said:
@Ben L. said:
"gold standard", which has absolutely nothing to do with metals.
So. Proof that the American High School Education continues to decline in value?
QFT. Ben L. says some dumb shit, but this is the dumbest in a while.
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@mikeTheLiar said:
@boomzilla said:@Ben L. said:
QFT. Ben L. says some dumb shit, but this is the dumbest in a while."gold standard", which has absolutely nothing to do with metals.
So. Proof that the American High School Education continues to decline in value?To be fair "gold standard" is used rhetorically in a way that doesn't have a lot to do with metals even if historically the term did originate there.
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@locallunatic said:
@mikeTheLiar said:
@boomzilla said:
@Ben L. said:
QFT. Ben L. says some dumb shit, but this is the dumbest in a while."gold standard", which has absolutely nothing to do with metals.
So. Proof that the American High School Education continues to decline in value?
To be fair "gold standard" is used rhetorically in a way that doesn't have a lot to do with metals even if historically the term did originate there.It metaphorically says that [something] with respect to [whatever makes sense here] is like the metal gold was with respect to money systems. So to be fair in an accurate way (as opposed to whatever you did), it has something to do with metals, even if your average American high school graduate of the 21st Century doesn't understand why.
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@boomzilla said:
So to be fair in an accurate way (as opposed to whatever you did), it has something to do with metals, even if your average American high school graduate of the 21st Century doesn't understand why.
I know. People today don't know shit about how the financial system works when it comes to physical metals.
Money exists in bank accounts, which are electronic. When I transfer funds, it transfers on wires. The more money I transfer, the more wires it needs-- or more accurately, the more TIME on wires it needs. (It takes longer to transfer $1M than it does, $100k. You can see the numbers transferring on screen from one account to the other).
Wires are made of copper. So it should be the COPPER standard, not the GOLD standards.
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Probably <div>, but I hear <span> is pretty commonplace too.
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@Cassidy said:
Probably <div>, but I hear <span> is pretty commonplace too.
Man, this would be great if Google Answers were still around. I'd gladly kick in a few bucks to ask them "What is the most common HTML element used in the HTML of pages you've crawled/cached".
The answer would be "<blink>", and the murder spree would begin, and be justified.
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@Lorne Kates said:
The answer would be "<blink>", and the murder spree would begin, and be justified.
<blink> and you're dead.
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@Lorne Kates said:
@Cassidy said:
Probably <div>, but I hear <span> is pretty commonplace too.
Man, this would be great if Google Answers were still around. I'd gladly kick in a few bucks to ask them "What is the most common HTML element used in the HTML of pages you've crawled/cached".
The answer would be "<blink>", and the murder spree would begin, and be justified.
I'll do it for free!
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@Ben L. said:
I'll do it for free!
Interesting, for a 2005 survey. Would still like to know the 2013 results.
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@Lorne Kates said:
Are you taking the density co-efficient into account? A webpage of gold does not weigh the same as a webpage of selenium.
But Tungsten weighs very nearly the same as Gold, so you can make a web page out of Tungsten that weighs the same as a web page made of Gold, but at a substantially lower price (Tungsten costs approx $2 an ounce) .And you pocket the difference.
PROFIT!!
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Son, I am dissappoint... I came here to see if there would be anything above 'stupidity' (as 'porn' isn't realy an element) and you're talking about a bunch of atoms...
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@pnieuwkamp said:
Son, I am dissappoint... I came here to see if there would be anything above 'stupidity' (as 'porn' isn't realy an element) and you're talking about a bunch of atoms...
What about the element... of supplies!
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@Lorne Kates said:
(It takes longer to transfer $1M than it does, $100k. You can see the numbers transferring on screen from one account to the other).
Only if you use MovieOS. Plus you have to route it via several overseas intermediate banks which supposedly makes it difficult to trace while MovieOS is able to trace the transfer graphically on your screen.
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Sorry but am really confused about the movieOS.
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@louisemgr said:
Sorry but am really confused about the movieOS.
Put it on your resume, and you'll get a whole new world of job calls!
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@Ben L. said:
@louisemgr said:
Sorry but am really confused about the movieOS.
Maybe this will help.this would be better...chrome for android wouldn't let me post that and Firefox doesn't really like the MCE.
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@Zemm said:
this would be better...
How dare you link to that putrid stain on webcomics which is userfriendly?
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@dhromed said:
@Zemm said:
this would be better...
How dare you link to that putrid stain on webcomics which is userfriendly?
Did I misread the reference to MovieOS?
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@Zemm said:
Did I misread the reference to MovieOS?
I don't care about any of that, I just hate you for linking the bane of comics and humor.
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@dhromed said:
@Zemm said:
Did I misread the reference to MovieOS?
I don't care about any of that, I just hate you for linking the bane of comics and humor.
I thought Mandatory Fun Day held that title.
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@joe.edwards said:
Mandatory Fun Day
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@joe.edwards said:
I thought Mandatory Fun Day held that title.
MFD was better.
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@Cassidy said:
Probably <div>, but I hear <span> is pretty commonplace too.
Actually that hour would go to <p>