3 ms·
A friend of mine who was into alchemy, told me it was because the difference was only three protons. I don't if early alchemists knew that or why not consider m
by marcodiego 1y ago
A friend of mine who was into alchemy, told me it was because the difference was only three protons. I don't if early alchemists knew that or why not consider metals that are less than three protons different from gold.
- jrvieira 1y agono, alchemists didn't know about protons
- SoftTalker 1y agoYes they were closer to thinking that everything was fundamentally made from earth, wind, fire, and water.
- bee_rider 1y agoElectrons=Water Photons=Wind Neutrons=Earth Protons=Fire Clearly gold is just lead with a little bit of extra elemental fire, I mean, look at the colors.
- int_19h 1y agoThey did know about density, though, which is closely linked.
- jrvieira 1y agoHow so?
- cgriswald 1y agoThose would iridium, platinum, mercury, and thalium. For varying definitions of "early", these alchemists only knew about mercury and maybe platinum (there was platinum in Egyptian gold, but it isn't clear they knew it was in there or thought of it as anything more than an impurity). Mercury they did try to turn to gold. They thought of it as an ur-metal from which all other metals came. But as the sibling poster states, no, they didn't know.
- mariusor 1y agoI think that Gold/Platinum alloy is one of the plot points of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, and it's in relation to Newton's alchemical experiments.