Chemistry - Should one pronounce “periodic” the same in “periodic acid” and “periodic table”?

Solution 1:

I am an Australian English speaker and yes, this distinction is made in practice.

Possibly the only reasonable opportunity to use the pɪə pronunciation in the name of a compound is in the case of the entertaining molecule periodane, which is actually named after the periodic table. This molecule (and later a number of different plausible isomers) was identified computationally by a methodology called 'mindless chemistry' which optimises randomly generated molecular graphs. Periodane is a stable configuration of each atom on the second row of the periodic table, with the exception of neon (although some people are working on that).

Solution 2:

I'm not a professional chemist, just a student, but here are some observations from which I can speculate:

Note-- in this post,

/ˌpɜːraɪˈɒdɪk/==per-iodic

/pɪə(ɹ).iˈɒdɪk/==peer-iodic

(since IPA is annoying to read)

Remember, it's written as "per-iodic" acid many times. Which means it must be pronounced as "per-iodic" by whoever who reads/writes those texts. So we have some evidence showing the use of "per-iodic" as a pronunciation. I don't see any such evidence for "peer-iodic", though one of my teachers used it. I myself initially used "peer-iodic", but once I realized what the acid actually was, I switched to "per-iodic".