4 ms·

But then you'd miss on crystal structure to distinguish your diamonds from your coal.

• OJFord 3y ago
  Which single element are they then? Surely such a system would have a products table with something like nominal element fk, purity, mass columns anyway. (And stock table with fk to products.) Then nothing wrong with 'natural' key on the elements, but sure, products are the thing you've (personally) made up, so of course there's no 'someone else's' key to use.
  • TRiG_Ireland 3y ago
    Diamonds and coal are both pure carbon (mostly carbon-12). So is graphite, and buckminsterfullerene, and a number of other things. Crystal structure matters a lot.
    • OJFord 3y ago
      They're not pure carbon was my point. I wasn't saying crystal structure not important, I missed that but it'd be in my 'product derived from element x' table.