[Loch-Ruadh] alchemy?
Polydore
polydore at ntbb.net
Thu Aug 25 16:52:35 PDT 2005
They used a lot of lead and mercury... and poisoned themselves a lot.
They also blew themselves up a lot. Provided they lived in a time/place
where the church didn't imprision or kill them first. Or some prince
that they displeased by failing to make the promised gold...
On the other hand, being on a prince's expense account might make it
worth while!
PS: I'd like to borrow the philosopher's stone when he manages one. I
think living forever might be cool...
Polydore!
Terry Sikes wrote:
> Don't get me started on alchemy. I had a chemistry teacher that went
> into it in detail. Remember that alchemists, up until suprisingly not
> so long ago, thought that every element in the universe was made of
> earth, wind, fire, and water, and thought that if you mixed these four
> elements in the right combination you could make anything. So that
> meant since gold and lead were so close together in weight, if you
> just changed lead a little bit it would become gold. The man that
> discovered oxygen, in fact, was trying to find out why mercury, when
> you heated it with air, became red mercury (mercuric oxide) and
> weighed more, when almost everything else when you heated it turned
> black and weighed less. When he heated the mercuric oxide the oxygen
> came out and he noted that the vapor made him feel energetic and made
> a stick burst into flames.
>
> Terrence
> */
> /*
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