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17th May '13 5:38:16 AM erforce

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26th Apr '13 8:38:55 AM ActualScientist

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Polonium isn't that heavy.

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18th Apr '13 5:40:08 PM TiggersAreGreat

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Lists in alphabetical order are simply easier to work with.

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* ''Series/BabylonFive'': Attempts to avert this by claiming that Quantium-40 is an unknown [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotope isotope]] of potassium with unusual properties. Unfortunately, potassium-40 ''does'' exist in real life (albeit in small quantities): It's radioactive but otherwise unremarkable ([[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium-argon_dating except for being a major method of dating rocks]], meaning that it ultimately plays the trope straight....
* ''Series/BattlestarGalacticaReimagined'': A more subtle example than fictional elements: at one point the show attempted to suggest that organic Cylons have eight-membered rings in their biochemistry where humans have six-membered ones, and that [[spoiler: Hera]] has seven-membered ones. For various reasons (look up "aromaticity", and also the geometric ease with which saturated six-membered rings can be formed while keeping the carbon atoms' bonds at the apexes of a tetrahedron) the prevalence of six-membered rings in Earth biochemistry is a result of fairly basic physics about how atoms bond together, and not something arbitrary that can be simplistically changed to create "alien" biology.
* ''BlackHoleHigh'': Featured two of the characters "progressing" through the periodic table, taking on, in turn, the attributes of each element they passed: one's voice becomes high-pitched and squeaky as he passes helium, then fluoresces as he passes neon; the other turns metallic at aluminum, then reeks of rotten eggs as he passes sulphur. The plot becomes a race against time to resolve the situation before one of them reaches plutonium and explodes (The solution is for them to hug as they reach sodium and chlorine respectively, creating stable and benign table salt). It doesn't take too much FridgeLogic to see the problems with this, as several of the elements along the way should have been, while perhaps not as lethal as plutonium, lethal ''enough''. Several of the traits they demonstrated were not traits of the elements ''themselves''.
** And uranium, which does exactly the same thing in human-sized amounts as plutonium, is two elements before it.
** When they were hydrogen an ignition source would create an explosion with the oxygen in the air. If they made it to lithium any amount of liquid water would react violently with the lithium, releasing the hydrogen and heat which would likely cause an explosion. Yay!
* ''BreakingBad'': In the episode ''A Crazy Handful of Nothing'', the show takes a remarkable number of liberties with the chemistry of mercury fulminate. For one, it is not a crystal, it is a powder. This can be HandWaved by assuming that Walt's genius-level crystallography skill let him synthesize crystals out of it anyways, but the episode also makes two other notable errors: it vastly overestimates the explosive power of such a quantity of mercury fulminate, and it vastly underestimates the volatility of the compound itself. Mercury fulminate is ''highly'' reactive with heat and friction, which would only be increased in crystal form. It's a miracle the whole bag didn't explode in his pocket (perhaps that's why the episode is named [[FridgeBrilliance ''A Crazy Handful of Nothing'']]).
* ''Series/DoctorWho'': The Ninth Doctor deduces that the Slitheen family are calcium-based lifeforms based on the fact that they [[ToiletHumour emit gases]] that smell like halitosis and instructs Jackie and Mickey to use [[WeaksauceWeakness splashes of vinegar]] to explode Sip Fel Fotch Pasameer-Day Slitheen in a [[LudicrousGibs shower of viscera]]. No part of the above sentence accurately reflects the chemistry of calcium.
** Or the fact that bad breath is only related to tooth decay in that both are bacterial actions.
* ''Series/{{House}}'': Played on this trope once. In episode 48 (season 3, episode 2), a metal pin is removed from a boy who claimed to be abducted by aliens. House jokes, just for a moment, with Chase about the item being of an unidentifiable metal that might not even be terrestrial. Chase is puzzled and excited for a second, then House tells him immediately it's just ordinary titanium (it was a surgical pin that been used to set a broken arm and later worked loose).
* ''LookAroundYou'': Has a [[http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/lookaroundyou/series1/periodic.shtml Periodic Table]] made of [[RuleOfFunny funny]]. (And in context of the show, the chemical symbol for water is not a typo: "H20" [sic] is actually pronounced "aitch twenty".) This is in addition to the borderline insane qualities attributed to basic elements and compounds: sulphur gives you heat vision, iron causes giant scissors to materialize in the sky above you, bumcivilian (aka iron sulphide) soaks up sound waves, calcium is sentient and can melt your face, and nitrogen is the main ingredient in whiskey.
** [[ItIsPronouncedTroPay Excuse me, that's Iron de Havilland to the likes of you]].
** They actually state that whiskey is embenzalmine nitrotomine, which is produced by mefipulating nitrogen through water.
** The show is the personification of this trope and the rest of the ArtisticLicense index.
* ''Series/{{Revolution}}'': In Episode 12, sulfuric acid is shown being dispensed from a plastic bottle. Sulfuric acid at a concentration high enough to accomplish what Rachel is attempting would oxidize the carbon in the plastic and should only be stored in glass or ceramic containers.
* ''Series/SapphireAndSteel'': The opening narration. Spot the deliberate mistake:
-->All irregularities will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension. Transuranic heavy elements may not be used where there is life. Medium atomic weights are available: Gold, Lead, Copper, Jet, Diamond, Radium, Sapphire, Silver and Steel.\\
Sapphire and Steel have been assigned.
** And it ''is'' a deliberate mistake: they knew that gemstones and alloys are not elements, but it [[RuleOfCool sounded cool]].
** It could also be construed as a slightly careless wording. Those materials are _made_of_ medium atomic weights and not of transuranics.
* ''TheSarahConnorChronicles'': The main characters have to destroy a stockpile of coltan, an alloy which would be used to make Terminator models more advanced than the T-800 (that, being armored primarily with titanium, had a weakness to heat). In real life, coltan is an ''ore'' containing niobium and tantalum and not an alloy. Although, "in-universe" the fact that they used a thermite reaction to "cremate" dead terminators supposedly made of this highly heat-resistant metal is accurate. Thermite reactions are the hottest thing most people can get their hands on quietly (the simplest is rust and the powder from an Etch-a-Sketch (Aluminum)). It also burns through everything else (including steel and concrete) fairly easily.
* ''Series/StargateSG1'': Usually tried to avoid this by never clarifying what its exotic materials (naqahdah, trinium) were, compounds or elements or whatever. However, there is one big {{Narm}} for anyone who knows chemistry in the otherwise fantastic episode "The Torment of Tantalus", where both ''a brilliant scientist'' and several godlike {{Precursors}} think that electrons orbit atomic nuclei like planets around a star--something that has not been believed for decades. That could be poetic license (on the part of the characters, not the writers)--this conceit is used to [[LiesToChildren create a universal language anyone could recognize]] if they had a ''very'' basic understanding of chemistry and physics. It's the archaeologist, and not the physicist, on SG-1 who figures out what it's supposed to be, and the "brilliant scientist"'s scientific basis dates back to the 30s.
** Even worse, the episode states that it's the number of ''electrons'', not the number of protons, that defines an element.
** Similarly, an the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "Night Terrors" had aliens providing 'one moon circles' as a clue that they needed hydrogen.
** The scientist is well aware of what the the projection is, he even explains that it's some kind of attempt at a universal language. What he can't do is read it because he's not a linguist and can't read the code key on the walls of the room.
* ''Franchise/StarTrek'': Features dilithium being used as a power regulator. Normally, dilithium would be a phrase for two covalent-bonded lithium atoms; but ''Franchise/StarTrek'' ascribes it properties that allow it to regulate the matter-antimatter flow without blowing the ship to pieces. In ''Franchise/StarTrek'', the term dilithium is actually short for "2(5)6 dilithium 2(:)l diallosilicate 1:9:1 heptoferranide", a nonexistent compound which was ascribed implausible properties. Dilithium is able to do its job because its crystal structure repels ionized particles in a magnetic field, so it can be used to regulate matter and antimatter streams, thus allowing the reaction to occur at a controlled rate, whilst allowing the resulting "warp plasma" to exit in the direction required to get it to the warp coils in the nacelles. So while not technically a fuel, if a starship has cracked dilithium crystals and no way to replace or recrystallize it, they're sunk.

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* ''Series/StargateSG1'' usually tried to avoid this by never clarifying what its exotic materials (naqahdah, trinium) were, compounds or elements or whatever. However, there is one big {{Narm}} for anyone who knows chemistry in the otherwise fantastic episode "The Torment of Tantalus", where both ''a brilliant scientist'' and several godlike {{Precursors}} think that electrons orbit atomic nuclei like planets around a star--something that has not been believed for decades. That could be poetic license (on the part of the characters, not the writers)--this conceit is used to [[LiesToChildren create a universal language anyone could recognize]] if they had a ''very'' basic understanding of chemistry and physics. It's the archaeologist, and not the physicist, on SG-1 who figures out what it's supposed to be, and the "brilliant scientist"'s scientific basis dates back to the 30s.
** Even worse, the episode states that it's the number of ''electrons'', not the number of protons, that defines an element.
** Similarly, an the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "Night Terrors" had aliens providing 'one moon circles' as a clue that they needed hydrogen.
** The scientist is well aware of what the the projection is, he even explains that it's some kind of attempt at a universal language. What he can't do is read it because he's not a linguist and can't read the code key on the walls of the room.
* ''LookAroundYou'' has a [[http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/lookaroundyou/series1/periodic.shtml Periodic Table]] made of [[RuleOfFunny funny]]. (And in context of the show, the chemical symbol for water is not a typo: "H20" [sic] is actually pronounced "aitch twenty".) This is in addition to the borderline insane qualities attributed to basic elements and compounds: sulphur gives you heat vision, iron causes giant scissors to materialize in the sky above you, bumcivilian (aka iron sulphide) soaks up sound waves, calcium is sentient and can melt your face, and nitrogen is the main ingredient in whiskey.
** [[ItIsPronouncedTroPay Excuse me, that's Iron de Havilland to the likes of you]].
** They actually state that whiskey is embenzalmine nitrotomine, which is produced by mefipulating nitrogen through water.
** The show is the personification of this trope and the rest of the ArtisticLicense index.
* ''Series/BabylonFive'' attempts to avert this by claiming that Quantium-40 is an unknown [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotope isotope]] of potassium with unusual properties. Unfortunately, potassium-40 ''does'' exist in real life (albeit in small quantities): It's radioactive but otherwise unremarkable ([[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium-argon_dating except for being a major method of dating rocks]], meaning that it ultimately plays the trope straight...
* In ''TheSarahConnorChronicles'', the main characters have to destroy a stockpile of coltan, an alloy which would be used to make Terminator models more advanced than the T-800 (that, being armored primarily with titanium, had a weakness to heat). In real life, coltan is an ''ore'' containing niobium and tantalum and not an alloy. Although, "in-universe" the fact that they used a thermite reaction to "cremate" dead terminators supposedly made of this highly heat-resistant metal is accurate. Thermite reactions are the hottest thing most people can get their hands on quietly (the simplest is rust and the powder from an Etch-a-Sketch (Aluminum)). It also burns through everything else (including steel and concrete) fairly easily.
* ''Series/{{House}}'' played on this trope once. In episode 48 (season 3, episode 2), a metal pin is removed from a boy who claimed to be abducted by aliens. House jokes, just for a moment, with Chase about the item being of an unidentifiable metal that might not even be terrestrial. Chase is puzzled and excited for a second, then House tells him immediately it's just ordinary titanium (it was a surgical pin that been used to set a broken arm and later worked loose).
* ''BlackHoleHigh'' featured two of the characters "progressing" through the periodic table, taking on, in turn, the attributes of each element they passed: one's voice becomes high-pitched and squeaky as he passes helium, then fluoresces as he passes neon; the other turns metallic at aluminum, then reeks of rotten eggs as he passes sulphur. The plot becomes a race against time to resolve the situation before one of them reaches plutonium and explodes (The solution is for them to hug as they reach sodium and chlorine respectively, creating stable and benign table salt). It doesn't take too much FridgeLogic to see the problems with this, as several of the elements along the way should have been, while perhaps not as lethal as plutonium, lethal ''enough''. Several of the traits they demonstrated were not traits of the elements ''themselves''.
** And uranium, which does exactly the same thing in human-sized amounts as plutonium, is two elements before it.
** When they were hydrogen an ignition source would create an explosion with the oxygen in the air. If they made it to lithium any amount of liquid water would react violently with the lithium, releasing the hydrogen and heat which would likely cause an explosion. Yay!
* The opening narration from ''Series/SapphireAndSteel''. Spot the deliberate mistake:
-->All irregularities will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension. Transuranic heavy elements may not be used where there is life. Medium atomic weights are available: Gold, Lead, Copper, Jet, Diamond, Radium, Sapphire, Silver and Steel.\\
Sapphire and Steel have been assigned.
** And it ''is'' a deliberate mistake: they knew that gemstones and alloys are not elements, but it [[RuleOfCool sounded cool]].
** It could also be construed as a slightly careless wording. Those materials are _made_of_ medium atomic weights and not of transuranics.
* In ''Series/DoctorWho'', the Ninth Doctor deduces that the Slitheen family are calcium-based lifeforms based on the fact that they [[ToiletHumour emit gases]] that smell like halitosis and instructs Jackie and Mickey to use [[WeaksauceWeakness splashes of vinegar]] to explode Sip Fel Fotch Pasameer-Day Slitheen in a [[LudicrousGibs shower of viscera]]. No part of the above sentence accurately reflects the chemistry of calcium.
** Or the fact that bad breath is only related to tooth decay in that both are bacterial actions.
* There's a ''TalesFromTheCrypt'' episode in which an ulcer-plagued soap-maker is murdered by his wife, who dumps his body in one of his rendering vats and turns him into a stack of bath products. She uses one of these soap bars in the shower, only to be fatally burned by the residual acid from his stomach ... which is impossible, as turning fats into soap requires adding enough lye to give it a neutral to ''alkaline'' pH.
* A more subtle example than fictional elements: ''Series/BattlestarGalacticaReimagined'' at one point attempted to suggest that organic Cylons have eight-membered rings in their biochemistry where humans have six-membered ones, and that [[spoiler: Hera]] has seven-membered ones. For various reasons (look up "aromaticity", and also the geometric ease with which saturated six-membered rings can be formed while keeping the carbon atoms' bonds at the apexes of a tetrahedron) the prevalence of six-membered rings in Earth biochemistry is a result of fairly basic physics about how atoms bond together, and not something arbitrary that can be simplistically changed to create "alien" biology.
* In the episode ''A Crazy Handful of Nothing'', ''BreakingBad'' takes a remarkable number of liberties with the chemistry of mercury fulminate. For one, it is not a crystal, it is a powder. This can be HandWaved by assuming that Walt's genius-level crystallography skill let him synthesize crystals out of it anyways, but the episode also makes two other notable errors: it vastly overestimates the explosive power of such a quantity of mercury fulminate, and it vastly underestimates the volatility of the compound itself. Mercury fulminate is ''highly'' reactive with heat and friction, which would only be increased in crystal form. It's a miracle the whole bag didn't explode in his pocket (perhaps that's why the episode is named [[FridgeBrilliance ''A Crazy Handful of Nothing'']]).

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7th Apr '13 8:34:38 PM KTera

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1st Apr '13 11:36:37 PM nombretomado

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29th Mar '13 9:56:23 PM UncloudedTJ

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