I want to understand it but everything I read about it oscillates impossibly between vulgar metals -> gold and some kind of spiritual transformation metaphysical stuff
What is it and what can be legit gleaned from it in an empirical or useful sense?
Does it have utility outside of use as a metaphor or allegory or whatever?
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That’s not alchemy. Alchemy was changing elements, specifically not-gold metals into gold, not just molecules.
You can turn copper + zinc into brass, but the atoms of copper and zinc still exist within brass. You can’t turn a copper atom into a zinc atom.
You can mix gold atoms with something else to make a gold alloy, you can’t change gold atoms into something else or vice versa.
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Do you know the difference between an atom and a molecule? I can’t tell if you’re just trolling at this point.
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Nooooo, that’s not what an atom is. Compounds (substances made of atoms from more than one element), can be magnetic. Like rare-earth magnets are made of rare-earth elements.
Neodymium magnets are made of an alloy of the following elements: neodymium, iron, and boron.
Samarium-cobalt magnets are made from, you guessed it, the elements samarium, cobalt.
I think you should revisit some chemistry resources. You’re missing some fundamental concepts.
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Magnetism is a force which is generated by the motion of electrons within atoms. Electrons orbit the nucelus of atoms and some metals, such as iron are ferromagnetic. Magnetic fields are generated due to their magnetic moment, and these fields interact with other things that also have magnetic moment.
Electrons have a property known as quantum mechanical spin. This creates what is known as a magnetic dipole moment. In non magnetic materials, the moments in the material are in a random arrangement, often pointing in opposite directions and cancelling out the magnetic fields they generate. With magnetic materials, particles have spin in a particular direction, resulting in magnetism, and the magnetic fields are cumulative.
With metals, such as iron, there are unpaired electrons and they spin in the same direction, and the field they generate is cumulative, so you get a metal that is attracted to or repelled by magnets.
Elements can be changed into other elements through nuclear reactions, but this wouldn’t be possible through more simple means. If you ate a chunk of iron for instance, it would remain as iron. Rather than being a solid piece of iron it’d be fragmented and dispersed throughout the body so it depends on how sensitive your tools are for detecting magnetism.