Picture Quiz (and Chemistry Lecture)

June 20th, 2005

Filed under: Comics

Reed Richards thinks he’s so smart, but clearly his understanding of basic chemistry is a little off*. Admittedly, this is Reed Richards channeling Stan Lee, so that explains a great deal. What is wrong with this picture?

Scene from Fantastic Four #20
From Fantastic Four #20 (Black and white because it’s from The Essential Fantastic Four Volume 1. Art by Jack Kirby, words by Stan Lee, scanning by Hewlett and Packard.
*Speaking of bad chemistry, how about this week’s Justice League Unlimited with Nth-metal being described as “transuranic iron” and as having an atomic number of 160? Please, if you feel the need to create your own element, don’t try to explain it away using real world chemistry. It simply doesn’t work.

“Transuranic” refers to any element with a higher atomic number than Uranium. Iron has an atomic number of 26, Uranium has an atomic number of 92. By definition, iron must have an atomic number of 26; if iron had another atomic number, it would be another element . It is impossible to have transuranic iron. (I suspect that the script is confusing atomic number with atomic mass, but I’ll let a chemist or physicist explain that one).

14 Responses to “ Picture Quiz (and Chemistry Lecture) ”

  1. Dave Lartigue
    June 20th, 2005 at 8:09 pm

    Just pretend like that balloon is pointing to The Thing. I’m sure REED knows that the smallest group of atoms that compose an element is…an atom.

  2. Scott
    June 20th, 2005 at 8:12 pm
    Official Comment

    How about it points at Johnny. Ben at leat graduated college.

  3. Nala
    June 21st, 2005 at 7:28 am

    Perhaps it was iron that passed through a strange space cloud billions of years ago.

    You are right though, some form of DCU techno-babble is needed instead of trying to base it in reality. Can you imagine trying to explain Silver Age Kryptonite and the various chemistry/physics needed to explain the plethora of colors and radiations they emit?

  4. Layne
    June 21st, 2005 at 10:38 am

    I thought Nth-metal was Transuremic iron, which was why Green Lantern’s ring is powerless against it.

  5. farsider
    June 21st, 2005 at 11:33 am

    He couldn’t control anything of course. The sun is not molecular. It’s plasma.

  6. Jeff R.
    June 21st, 2005 at 11:58 am

    Well, “Transuranic Iron” might mean the next element after Uranium that falls into Group 8, and thus might be expected to be chemically like iron. Except that’s already known as Hassium. So maybe the next one after that? But that would be 140. Unless another orbital opens up in the eighth period, and that makes for a group of exactly 20 elements…

  7. Loren
    June 21st, 2005 at 2:45 pm

    160? I thought they said 676.

  8. Scott
    June 21st, 2005 at 4:27 pm
    Official Comment

    It could have been 676. My memory has been known to be wrong before (I looked for a script online, but couldn;t find one). An atomic number of 676 is an even more egregious error.

  9. M
    June 21st, 2005 at 10:26 pm

    I’m with Jeff R. the best explanation (other than an egregious goof up) is that it’s a transuranic element with iron-like properties, commonly referred to as ‘transuranic iron’, in the universe where it exists by those who actually know it exists, although it is in fact of course not iron at all. And obviously DCU’s atomic physics results in it being astronomically more stable than our understanding of real world physics would lead us to expect of a nucleus that massive.

    Of course, as long as we’re supposing, it might include something like Strange or Charmed matter in addition to the high atomic number mightn’t it? Which might account for something, or just throw the critics off the scent.

    Charmed matter wears really tacky clothes and can’t act.;)

  10. M
    June 21st, 2005 at 10:37 pm

    P.S. Elements, as chemical units anyway, are composed of molecules ,just molecules whose atoms are all the same element. From helium molecular formula He, to Hydrogen H2, oxygen’s O2 and O3 aka ozone, etc.

    No help directly controlling a sun where everything is a plasma, if we take the power to control molecules literally.

  11. Carl Fink
    June 26th, 2005 at 12:15 pm

    Note that elements are not described as “molecular” unless vaporized, or in some cases liquified. Individual atoms of, say, copper congeal together into a lump of microcrystals, but there is no regular relationship of some number of atoms, say Cu3, that would be a “molecule”.

  12. Bret
    January 24th, 2007 at 5:15 pm

    I just use the explination that FF came through Lee and Kirby first (marvel comics exist as is in the marvel U, and they couldn’t understand half the stuff Reed said, so they just filled it with techno babbel.

  13. Get chemistry help here!
    May 14th, 2008 at 12:01 am

    Get chemistry help here!…

    calculate the solubility product constant for cupric hydroxide from half-cell potential…

  14. Gon
    March 25th, 2009 at 5:36 am

    Molecules are compounds consisting of atoms bonded together with covalent bonds. Some elemental compounds are molecules, like oxygen, sulfur, and iodine.
    But metallic elements and the noble gasses are not molecules.

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