02-18-2015, 11:38 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-18-2015, 11:47 PM by Samsarilian.)
(02-18-2015, 10:45 PM)droid327 Wrote:(02-17-2015, 12:31 PM)syscrash Wrote: I agree so many of the comments pick apart the technical arguments of an event. These people sound like the ones that spend their time debunking Star Trek as junk science. The show is only meant to represent a concept. The show uses the type of science that would allow you to jump up in a falling elevator just before it hits the ground and be saved. Stop tring to find holes in the tech and deal with the concept. As for concept the fire solution was pretty good. It made sense even though technically it would never work.
No, that's not entirely fair. The show quite often just hand-waves its explanations as "magic", but this time they deliberately tried to make it techno-babbly and scientific - and by doing so, they invite the viewer to be critical. If they just wanted the viewer to accept it, they could have just had the Grimm-oire give them a recipe for Excandesco suppressant, and just leave it at that.
And its not nitpicking either; when they make the science so egregiously and obviously wrong, it takes you out of your willing suspension of disbelief. Its not just bad science, its bad screenwriting.
I have had college level inorganic chem, was an inorganic chem tutor for a few semesters in fact and I am not sure that what they put together would not work. At least in a lab where you had your phosphorus in a crusible. I would not say it would not till I mixed it and tried to use it on a phosphorus fire. I will not do that because as Izzy pointed out phosphorus is notoriously hard to put out. It is so reactive with oxygen that it is stored in jars filled with OIL.
Beeswax is used in candles not because it is particularly flammable but because it sets up well, is available to those in an agrarian society and can be handled at body temp without melting (I make this statement because I saw it brought up elsewhere that it is used in candle making). It was also not the only ingredient and organic chem is not an area I have ever had an expertise so I do not know how all those essential oils and such would mix or what they would make. I do know that inorganic chem deals mostly with carbon compounds. That is it is the chemistry of life as we know it.
I will point out that oil is more combustible than wax yet that is what most chem labs keep phosphorus stored in.
If I had something important to say, I would have mumbled it.