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Post by JezusBagels on Jun 16, 2009 13:55:44 GMT -5
If you follow the science behind it. For example, don't turn stuff into gold because even today no one has successfully done that... legitimately. People fake it all the time (turning it into substances that look like gold but are not).
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Dougal
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Post by Dougal on Jun 16, 2009 16:17:28 GMT -5
Well, alchemists were responsible for the discovery of phosphorus, gunpowder and nitric acid, so they had a fairly decent knowledge of chemistry, if not a good understanding of the underlying principles. Still, I'd guess that we wouldn't be allowed to break out the phosphorus grenades and nitrocellulose any time soon.
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Post by JezusBagels on Jun 16, 2009 16:17:59 GMT -5
My thoughts precisely
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Post by ivory on Jun 16, 2009 19:22:50 GMT -5
The finding of phosphorus was an accident though - a guy tried to make gold by leaving fifty buckets of urine in his basement for about a month. He ended up dying, but since it was an accident, is it still allowed to be made since if it's different worlds, would people be making the same mistakes?
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Dougal
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Post by Dougal on Jun 16, 2009 22:50:17 GMT -5
Or maybe someone was heating bone ash with sand for some reason and some of the fumes ended up going into water. There's plenty of ways accidents can happen, so you don't have to use the same accident.
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Post by Brandwyn on Jun 17, 2009 5:09:31 GMT -5
Same thing with the discovery of making soap. Lots of inventions were accidents or experiments that had gone ary. Someone was trying to produce something in an experiment and that didn't work, but they ended up discovering something else.
The discovery of lye was an accident and then it was found that lye would remove all kinds of things. (Lye is made basically by pouring water repeatedly over certain types of wood ashes. Hickory and Ash trees being the best (if I remember correctly...).
Someone then mixed the lye with animal fat (most likely by throwing out the stuff on a dung heap) and noticed the chemical reaction and eventually they figured out that once dry after the reaction the concoction would make bubbles when wetted and cleaned off dirt. Soap was made in the middle ages. I believe it was also developed in China first - but I am not sure on that point.
So, in answer, yes, alchemy is ok to use in these settings. Just make sure that whatever you are doing is plausable to the Middle Ages (like Dougal said).
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Post by ivory on Jun 17, 2009 10:56:53 GMT -5
Great! Thnx! ^-^
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