Susan Molnar, age 11, of Calgary, Alberta, Canada, for her question:

Why are many science words so long and unpronounceable?

We inherited our everyday words and most of them lost their original meanings in the dim past. But scientists have a chance to create new words. And, like sensible people, they include clues to what they mean. As a rule they build them from Greek and Latin     dead languages whose words no longer change their meanings. They try to cram in as many clues as possible    and many science terms are coined to name very complex items and operations. So several words or part words are strung together to create a long, unpronounceable term.

For example, the term nucleic acids refer to certain acid type chemicals found in the nucleus of the living cell. Later one of them was identified and named deox¬yribonucleic acid. Each extra syllable has a hidden clue to one of its details. For convenience we call it DNA, but its full name tells a scientist many things about it. A good unabridged dictionary gives all these hidden clues to help you to figure out many over sized science terms for yourself.