/tg/Station 13

I'M BAD AT CHEMISTRY, DISREGARD MY MISTAKES
I came up with some scifi magic-chem bullshit sometime last year, and thought we could somehow work this into the lore for the "what the actual fuck is plasma" question.
A substance that acts as an electron glue/substitute, that "fills in" reactions that would otherwise not work. Think of a chemical mary-sue.
Lets say that element A wants 2 electrons, and element B wants 4 electrons, and a chemist wants them bonded for some dumbass reason.
A and B wouldn't bond, normally, as they can't share or exchange any electrons. But if the chemist threw in some of this "substitute", it bond with both A and B, and "give up" parts of itself as substitutes for electrons (or accept electrons from elements if required), and "become" the bond between A and B.

Maybe plasma's made like this. Or not. Lets brainstorm.

That kind of thing happens anyway in real life. No need for plasma.

In your example the A and B could form A2B, with 2 A atoms for every one B atom, such as in CO2. All three atoms end up with full valence electrons and single bonds with each other.

Things like double and triple bonds also form, making a compound with just one A and one B possible. An example is CO, carbon monoxide. The atoms form multiple bonds and end up with full valence shells, creating a stable(ish) compound.

You can also have weirder compounds that have over filled(PCl5) or underfilled valence shells (BrCl3).

Ah, I should have worded it differently.
Both A and B WANT electrons, but have none to GIVE.
But yeah I was aware of all that other stuff, I was actually taking a break from chem homework while I was writing this post lmao

Smoopadoop wrote:Ah, I should have worded it differently.
Both A and B WANT electrons, but have none to GIVE.

Im not sure I understand what you mean here...

If an atom wants electrons it means it has some unpaired electrons available. Thats why it wants the electrons in the first place, to bond with the ones it has. If it doesnt have any electrons to share/give up, it has a full valence shell, as far as I know (other than H+).

If A nd B have a similar electronegativity and both want electrons, but dont want to give up theirs they simply form covalent bonds and share the electrons they do have.

Do you mean that it would allow atoms to form ionic bonds when they would normally have covalent ones?

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to say. Its been a few years since I had chem courses.

i...forgot about that
i'm a dumbass but I was just trying to find an example of something that wouldn't work without my idea
your idea works, though
i'm bad at this, I need to do more homework

Plasma is a "smart" compound that creates reactioms otherwise impossible/improbable because it is the physical residue of other-wordly beings passing through our plane of reality.

Its called plasma because its the liquid part of a space dragons blood supply

Crag.

Crag.

You gotta make ash drakes leak plasma when wounded now.

we've had this thread before

danno wrote:we've had this thread before

Trapped in the cycles of our guilt

DemonFiren wrote:Crag.

Crag.

You gotta make ash drakes leak plasma when wounded now.

This is actually a good idea. and may help curb some of the existing miner problems by elevating the difficulty.

I'unno, stuff like this can run into problems when it comes to worldbuilding things when people start looking too deeply for defined reasons for everything and can't wrap their heads around the idea that something is supposed to be ambiguous.
The more you nail down in Absolute Defined True One And Only Canon, the more restrictive the setting becomes.

It's harmless enough when it's just people waffling on fan-theory sites but when people start bringing "we all agreed that this is the case" to beat people over the head with their "reeeeee this is the lore explanation" then it becomes an issue. Especially if someone codes in a neat new use for plasma in something and nerdlingers start yelling "b-b-b-but the lore for plasma doesn't support that!"

(luckily this isn't bay so I'm pretty sure those people will get told to fuck off)