Kamitachi ni Hirowareta Otoko - Vol. 4 Ch. 15 - How to use Alchemy

[Psychronia]

He's such a bad liar, it's adorable.

Would it be that hard to explain chemistry to the world? They already have the concept of elements, so just call our periodic table "sub-elements".
You'd have to simplify it, but in essence, it's just saying "The world is actually made up of a bunch of sub-elements. Alchemy is understanding these building blocks and using magic to manipulate how they mix together."

 

[captain_crunch]

did they mention other reincarnators in the previous chapters? i can't remember, reading so many similar isekai series 🤠

 

[stilgar]

I mean, you wouldn't have needed alchemy to turn that iron dirt into iron. People have been doing that for thousands of years now

 

[CelticMutt]

@captain_crunch I don't remember what chapter, but the one where he went to the church in the city and visited the gods, they told him there had been many previous reincarnators to this world.

 

[fuadhika]

@Mastermile Ah I see, so it is kinda pure water huh (as it doesn't really want to stay pure), but I guess in outer space there's no oxygen so it's possible there. But it is kinda weird that normal iron can easily rust and wrought iron which has less carbon is more resistant to rust, but then pure iron (which has even more less carbon) turns out to be even easier to rust, or maybe carbon doesn't have anything to do with oxidation. Anyway, thank you for the explanation.

 

[fuadhika]

@stilgar Now that you mention it, he should've told them how to refine it rather than depending on alchemy which is frowned upon. Unless he didn't know how the refining process is.

 

[stilgar]

He probably didn't know about it since it wasn't something he was interested in before he had died

 

[Robbini]

@stilgar

Maybe they're used to using chunks of iron ore to refine, rather than that kind of small iron particles

 

[fuadhika]

Yeah, he said that people of this world only mined iron that's in ore form.

 

[mahtan]

Well you can also get the iron with good ol' chemistry but I guess Ryouma don't have the needed knowledge for it.

 

[xxxNothingxxx]

Well even if he could get iron from chemistry he would probably just use alchemy since it's way easier.

 

[fuadhika]

I doubt that, alchemy was rather frowned upon in this world right? If he wanted to help people refine it then he should prefer chemistry, unless he didn't want to advance the technology of this world, or wanted to change people's opinion about alchemy.

 

[WhimsiCat]

@fuadhika : The problem with alchemy in this world is that nobody could understand how it work, because nobody know about molecular composition of things. (like in this chapter Ryouma had to remove oxygen from iron oxide first)

And if he want to teach people about chemistry, then there'd be question on how trustworthy it is, especially for some of the harder to test things due to not being visible to naked eyes.

 

[killercool]

@fuadhika - Why not both? Imagine if chemists could draw a circle and purify chemicals with 100% accuracy! A pharmacist could buy a pile of pure elements from an extraction specialist, then create a medicine that is made of only the correct metabolite molecules, and isn't mixed with the mirror molecules that plague actual chemical processes. Then it could be diluted with other pure chemicals (sugar or cellulose or whatever) via Mix circles, and medicine contamination would be a thing of the past!
It would require in depth knowledge and schooling about actual chemistry, but the magic would remove much of the waste and guesswork that real chemistry and mass production suffers from. Identify could even be used to confirm you haven't screwed up the formula.

Shoot, Separate circles (depending on your intent) could be used for everything from removing microorganisms from drinking water to distilling alcohol - 100% methanol removal! And being able to ensure perfect uniform mixing would be useful for anything from construction (concrete) to baking (no lumps).

Edit - Mixing would be good for making cement, not concrete. The non-uniformity of concrete is what makes it so useful - the crystal structure being forced to integrate rocks and rebar creates the internal stresses that make concrete so strong.

 

[Kokone]

cute

 

[Kisato]

@killercool Magic. The ultimate catalyst.

 

[fuadhika]

@WhimsiCat But isn't chemistry can be more seen than alchemy? At the very least the process and technique are tangible, while you can only see the circle in alchemy and do the whole process inside your head. Both can produce the same result but I think chemistry is more preferable due to the tangibleness.

@killercool Well I guess chemistry is a step in reaching alchemy. We do chemistry because there's no alchemy irl, if alchemy is real then there would be no such thing as chemistry process, all we need is just the knowledge while both process and technique would be done by using alchemy. I think they could modify the circle to adjust how much they want to separate or mix, like separate only nitrogen from air rather than separate all the components individually, and mix roughly to get concrete. They might even be able to modify the circle to do things like distributing all the stress throughout the whole sword in swordsmithing to make it tougher even without heat treatment.

Edit: Fixed grammatical errors, sorry english is not my first language.

 

[welcome2atlantis]

Make gold! Gold~!!

 

[Pen3]

Wow i didnt notice, but the mom is very stacked. Daughter stands no chance.

 

[EOTFOFYL]

@fuadhika

Chemistry would be bounded by the rules of the universe, Magic usually ignore those rules. Rather than being about tangibility, accessibility would be the dominating factor.