Chemistry and misc. stuff concerning it.

fleadermouse wrote:Safehold in general does not understand the concept of the element they see gold, silver, iron, etc as substances, but I see no indication of any understanding of what an element is from a chemistry point of view. Certainly not from a repeating cyclic point of view with respect to atomic mass.

You also need to be able to measure and discuss electric charges to develop this concept.

So without electricity periodic table is out of our range?

fleadermouse wrote:Safehold in general does not understand the concept of the element they see gold, silver, iron, etc as substances, but I see no indication of any understanding of what an element is from a chemistry point of view. Certainly not from a repeating cyclic point of view with respect to atomic mass.

You also need to be able to measure and discuss electric charges to develop this concept.

Not true. A large number of elements were discovered and considered to be elements before the concept of electric charges was developed. It is true that a true sense of chemistry - that is, why do certain reactions occur will require the concept of electric charge, but just determining elements, no.

We need to establish very clear definitions of what we mean by the word element. In the modern chemistry sense of the word the concept of the element did not exist prior to study of charge. The fact that some of them were discovered is not relevant. Without the understanding of periodicity, the "element" is just a named material that has some observed properties. Earth, wind, fire and water were called elements, that does not imply chemical understanding.

The foundational issues for anything beyond a list require the understanding of electrical charge. All chemical reactions involve some type of charge movement or rearrangement. If you have citations for your statements beyond discovery and classification please supply them.

Brown and LeMay "Chemistry the central science" is a great general chemistry text you can probably get one that is one edition out of date for $5 on eBay. Read the chapters on bonding, periodicity, atomic theory, molecular orbital theory, and chapters 1-3 which introduces the concept of elements and the periodic table extremely well.

The periodic table is not just a list of elements.