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Alchemical "elements" corresponding to phases of m

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Dogbrain
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11 Aug 2008, 11:02 am

iamnotaparakeet wrote:
For anyone that doesn't know, up until the last couple hundred years the four elements model was prevalent in the scientific community.

These elements were: earth, water, air, and fire.

Does anyone think that these "elements" more or less correspond to:
Solid, liquid, gas, and plasma.


Not quite. I'd say "solid", "liquid", "gas", and "energy"

Plasma would have been beyond the apprehension of the ancients.



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11 Aug 2008, 11:17 am

skafather84 wrote:
you forgot the ether.

That's "æther", which some say is analogous to the quantum froth - virtual particles that pop into and out of existence continually below the Plancke scale where general relativity is no longer applicable.


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11 Aug 2008, 1:55 pm

iamnotaparakeet wrote:
Barracuda wrote:
No. The idea of an element is something indivisible, immutable; unchangeable, in a word. Plus we have aether in the ancient system, and there are no less than five states of matter that we've discovered so far. And before you start getting any funny ideas, BEC isn't anything like aether.

Besides, there are totally eight elements. :roll:


No funny ideas here if you actually bothered to read. Boise-Einstein Condensation, wow, is that ever taught to chemistry students? The ancient system? Really now, there were many not just one. Also your use of a modern definition is meaningless in this context and unrelated to what I was saying, which you would have seen if you cared to read rather than try to be a smart-aleck.


Actually, a little wikipedia work shows that all but a couple have five elements. I was assuming the greek system, which is what you were talking about.

I read the whole thread an all you proposed was a theory. I gave an answer to that theory. What then, exactly, were you trying to say?


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