Chapter Text
Scene 1: Library, Miload Mansion, Evening
Sub-scene 1: Blackboard comes out
Subaru lays down on the floor, his muscles aching after his routine training with Garfiel and Clind.
Beatrice: "Here, have some lemomu juice, in fact."
Subaru: "Thanks Beako, I needed some electrolytes within me right now. Clind can be hardcore sometimes!"
Beatrice: "He should go easier on my contractor in fact! you are perfect as you are!"
Subaru: "Thank you but I like seeing myself improve in the ways that I have. Even just thinking back to a few months ago my everything has improved so much since I started training as a knight.
Anyway, now that we are here, want to continue from last time? You were curious about chemistry yes?"
Beatrice: "YES! YES, in fact! wait right here, let me bring my tools!"
She scurried off skipping and jumping like a toddler who'd been given a new toy.
Subaru grasped his chest and came to his knees
Subaru: "Adorable! Mega ultra adorable! Help! Help, I will die! I will die from cuteness overdose!"
Beatrice: "Stop being dramatic in fact! alright, let's get to it, what is chemistry? I know what chemistry is but just in case yours is different, describe it."
Subaru: "Very well then, Chemistry is the study of matter. And matter is anything that has mass and occupies space. Chemistry deals with the study of composition, properties, structure, behavior, and other things of matter. How chemicals are formed, destroyed, how they interact with other chemicals, with temperature, with pressure, with density, all sorts of things!"
Beatrice quickly jotted it all down, even when writing faster than the speed of speech, her handwriting was immaculate.
Beatrice: "I see. So it is pretty much the same as alchemy just without the use of magic, I suppose."
Subaru: "I guess so. Do Alchemists share their research with other alchemists? for peer review and stuff?"
Beatrice: "No, magical and alchemical research is a heavily personal process often carried out by a single person or clan throughout their life. They may share medicine or spells with their apprentices or apothecaries but no one ever discloses their secrets, unless with their apprentices, or if they're a teacher, or if they're selling it."
Subaru: "Yeeeeeaaah, there we have the first major difference between the sciences of Earth and Laguna. On Earth, academic research has a very heavy focus on repeatability. Like, ...wait let me say that again.
Any discovery, experiment, and so on must be universal, it shouldn't matter if a particular person is doing it, it shouldn't matter where it's done, when it's done, as long as the same set of conditions are met. This is a core tenant of all Earth science. if someone discovers how to make electricity out of magnets, you can't just say that you did and not reveal your methods to everyone and just claim that only you can do it. Because then people will think you are a scammer of some kind. Also, when people around the world are working on the same problem, they can point out each other's mistakes, come up with ideas others may not have thought of, and so on. This greatly improves the time efficiency and reliability of the science being done.
Checking each other's work is a big deal, no one takes your research seriously until it's been reviewed by either someone trust worthy or a lot of people."
Beatrice: "Interesting, very very interesting! no wonder it's such an advanced world, I bet mother would have loved to visit such a place."
Subaru: "She would, wouldn't she? She might just stay permanently."
Beatrice: "A world where knowledge is shared openly was her ultimate dream after all."
Subaru: "Yeah, what were we talking about? right, chemistry. So, do I just do chemistry 101? not much else to do with it."
Beatrice: "101?"
Subaru: "It means an introduction class, in a school usually."
Beatrice: "Absolutely! whenever you are ready, in fact!"
Subaru: "Alright then! Is there a blackboard around here?"
Beatrice: "There is one stored behind that shelf."
They carefully pull out a blackboard on wheels, like one would find in a tuition hall or a lab. It was a wooden board painted with either charcoal or slate. Subaru noticed it can even be flipped around.
They quickly set it up.
Sub-scene 2: Chemistry 101
Subaru: "Okay then, gotta start from the very basics. Oooh you have colorful chalk, nice.
So then, let us start with the question: What do you think is the smallest possible thing, Beako?"
Beatrice: "A single particle of mana I suppose."
Subaru: "That... may actually be true, I don't know much about mana still. Other than mana, in the natural world, if you keep dividing an object in half, eventually you'll reach a point where you can't do it anymore, you will reach the smallest unit of the substance, this smallest unit is called a molecule, and they're too tiny to detect visually, their size varies greatly but even the bigger ones would be in the nanometer range."
Beatrice: "yes, that's logical. The same as mana then. I had assumed that was the case but didn't have the means to verify it."
Subaru: "So you can detect mana to it's smallest particles? that is some insane sensitivity! A machine with that level of sensitivity would be so hard and expensive to make!"
Beatrice: "Of course in fact! I am a spirit, I am made of it! Though that doesn't mean that just any spirit can do such a thing, I have simply trained to the point of being capable of such things."
Subaru: "Incredible! I am truly blessed to be in your presence. But wait if you have such sensitivity then how come you can't detect molecules?"
Beatrice: "Mana is a form of pure energy, the two are incomparable in fact. Though now that you mention it, it should be possible to do so. AAAHHHH I can't believe I never thought of researching it myself!"
Subaru: "It's only natural to miss things when you're focused. This is why sharing knowledge and working together is so great!"
Beatrice: "I see. what is this 'nanometer'?"
Subaru: "It is a unit of measurement. it is 10^-9 so a trillion times smaller than a meter. Actually it's quite peculiar that you guys also use meters, was it a coincidence or was it the work of another otherworlder like myself, I wonder.
Actually I want to test something, I know that I am 173 centimeters tall and that shouldn't have changed much so we can compare the meters from Earth and Laguna."
Beatrice: "That is a great idea, in fact! there are a bunch of rulers and other measurement tools in that cupboard behind you."
They quickly then took out the rulers and Subaru started fiddling with them. The smallest marking was only down to half a centimeter however.
Subaru: "All of the markings seem to match up on all these rulers but that could just be from being a part of a set. Are these rulers standardized or do they vary a lot Beako?"
Beatrice: "I am not sure about that, I have never inspected a ruler used by commoners. There probably is a good bunch of variation among them, in fact. The ones used by nobility would mostly match up I would assume."
Subaru: "I see, well time to measure my height!"
They took the largest ruler which was 1.5 Lagunican meters long and started measuring Subaru.
Beatrice: "You are 170.5 centimeters in height."
Subaru: "So the Lagunican meter is about 1.45% shorter than Earth meter. That's pretty significant, a lot of things like speed of light and acceleration due to gravity would need to be adjusted to Lagunican units. Or maybe just keep using Earth... nah, too much confusion. Okay, I will continue to say things in Earth meters and just mention at the front of the book the conversion and we should make a new ruler accurate to Earth meters for reference."
Beatrice: "That would be for the best I suppose, or we could simply make Earth meters the standard."
Subaru: "We can do that?"
Beatrice: "I am the great spirit of yin and we have the backing of a royal candidate, of course we can! And this kind of reform will only strengthen Emilia's position I suppose, as I said, measuring rulers are not regulated all that much."
Subaru: "That would be very cool if we could do that. Then we should also reproduce other things like liters, radians, seconds, temperature and make them standard across the world."
Beatrice: "We shall if my contractor wishes so."
Subaru: "That's great... oh right, the nanometer! so any measuring unit can be subdivided or multiplied by a power of ten to create a new order of magnitude of that measurement, like this:"
He starts writing on the black board, on the middle he wrote 'meter', and then filled up the rest:
Magnitude Prefixes:
atto-meter 10^-18
femto-meter 10^-15
pico-meter 10^-12
nano-meter 10^-9
micro-meter 10^-6
milli-meter 10^-3
centi-meter 10^-2
deci-meter 10^-1
meter 10^0
deca-meter 10^1
hecto-meter 10^2
kilo-meter 10^3
mega-meter 10^6
giga-meter 10^9
tera-meter 10^12
peta-meter 10^15
(don't remember)-meter 10^18
"There, these are the most commonly used ones. This can be applied to any quantity really, length, time, volume, angle, and whatnot. A nanometer is a trillionth of a meter."
Beatrice: "Very useful in fact."
Subaru: "We can talk with Otto about what would need to be done for standardizing these. Anyway, back to the molecule."
Beatrice: "Yes, so all matter is made of tiny particles which can vary in types."
Subaru: "Yeah, now molecules themselves are not necessarily the smallest unit of matter they are the smallest units of any given substance which we are going to call chemicals going forward. They themselves are composed of atoms, which are the smallest units of matter. Atoms of the same kind are identical and there are 118 discovered elements of matter which can be mixed and matched to form an unlimited number of chemicals."
Beatrice: "Hund-HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN??!!?"
Subaru: "Hahahaha yep, that many! ok let's see how much of the periodic table I can recall"
He couldn't in fact, remember much.
Subaru flipped the board to the other side, drew the table and went from Hydrogen to Sulfur and Iron and Uranium and some other elements here and there, and then just noted everything else he could remember on the side, outside the table.
Beatrice: "So all things are made of these, incredible. How did you find out about these? What was the process?"
Subaru: "Hmmmm I am not sure how you count protons and stuff,but there is spectroscopy where you shine a light through a gas or vaporized form of a substance and the light that comes out of it is a property specific to that element. You can identify what the element is or what a chemical is composed of, even from distant stars Beako! You can find out what the stars are made of, what the planets in distant star systems are made of by studying their spectrum, is that not cool? is that not the coolest thing you have ever heard?"
Beatrice: "It is! It is! that is incredible! I never imagined I would run out of words to appreciate something, Earth's technology is magical, ironically."
Subaru: "As the quote goes, 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic'.
Now, even atoms are made up of stuff, there are three subatomic, fundamental particles that compose the atom. They are the proton, the neutron, and the electron. the are named so because of the charges the carry. Protons are positively charged, neutrons are neutral with no charge and electrons have negative charge. protons and neutrons are stuck together at the center of the atom, this central core is called the nucleus. the electrons on the other hand spin around the nucleus at ridiculous speeds."
While saying this, he draws the classic image of an atom.
Beatrice: "Why such a precarious structure? That seems not very stable."
Subaru: "Ohohohoho you already have the right idea! as for why they are like that, it's just how the universe decided to be I suppose. More importantly, if atoms were stable, we wouldn't have all kinds of chemistry, fire wouldn't exist, proteins, water, nothing. Chemistry is all about atoms being unstable by themselves and looking for stable situations. This is what drives the formation of molecules, atoms reacting with other atoms to get into a more stable state. Molecules with atoms of two or more different elements are called compounds. This is why some chemicals are much more volatile and energetic than others, a bunch of unstable atoms violently putting themselves into stable situations, in the process releasing heat and byproducts."
Beatrice: "I see, so everything exists because these tiny things are trying to become less unstable. Mana works the same way I suppose, from high energy to low energy."
Subaru: "Yeah, and the atoms themselves have types and affinities and energies intrinsic to them. Put a high and low energy atom together and you get a very stable compound. Like salt is relatively stable, acids are not stable, pure sodium reacts violently with water, and then you have Teflon which is just impossible to destroy, acid, base, nothing touches it, it's so stable. Which started becoming a problem since nothing can break it down, it just roams around in the world, in the ecosystem and nothing's able to decompose it. It's not toxic or anything but it surely isn't a good thing, right?"
Beatrice: "Well, if it isn't harming anything then it should be fine right? like the nitrogen gas you talked about?"
Subaru: "Hopefully Beako, hopefully. One can never be sure about what a random variable will do to the world."
Beatrice: "Like how you are going to change the world?"
Subaru: "Let's hope again that I don't end up doing something negative instead."
Beatrice: "Think better of yourself, in fact! Anything you touch will turn to gold, I can guarantee as your contractor."
Subaru: "If you say so Beako, I'll believe it."
Beatrice: "You are so annoying sometimes in fact. It is time for dinner now, I suppose."
Subaru: "Oh right, time flows by so quickly when we talk! And we have only barely touched the surface of this subject, even with my limited education. Oh well, we have our entire lives to talk about it."
Beatrice: "Indeed, I look forward to knowing everything about you and your world in fact."
Subaru: "After dinner let's find Otto to talk about the logistics of standardizing measurement across the world. If it was easy someone would have done it already."
Beatrice: "Very well then."
Scene 2: Hallway, Miload mansion, night
Subaru: "What would we call this measurement standard? In my world it was called the SI system. the base units were meter for length, seconds for time and kilograms for weight. All other units were derived from these."
Beatrice: "We should name it after you, 'The Natsuki Measurement Standards', I suppose."
Subaru: "Nope! Nah! no way, that's way too gaudy Beako, I would die from embarrassment, not to mention we are only reproducing something that already exists!"
Beatrice: "But it will only exist in our world thanks to your contribution, in fact. Do you think anyone else would or could have done it? I heavily doubt it, I suppose. You deserve the acknowledgement, I will not let anyone else take away your credit!"
Subaru: "Is there any point arguing about this?"
Beatrice: "Nope, in fact."
Subaru: *Sigh* "Alright, ok, I'll do it. Ah, we've arrived."
Beatrice: "So it seems."
They entered the dining hall. Later that night they told Otto about their idea and it would be an understatement to say that his eyes lit up. Subaru thought to himself how this debacle was a bigger headache than he had imagined.