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[Werdna]

So not lighter than air, but it would float in water. Interesting.

In fact, 200 kg/m^3 is about the same density as cork.

FTFY

I think they meant SLADE cork.

I can just see a 6 armed hamster demon popping a slade cork off a nicely aged bottle of *hellberry wine*.  Cheers!

Just a typo, I meant m^3.  The website had listed cork in the equivalent g / cm^3, and I still had that on the brain when I wrote it. 

[ASCIt]

So, basically, once (not if, mind you) Toady implements plating, I can [exploitively] mine a boulder of slade and use it to create a core for an adamantine [anything]? I most definitely like the way this is going.

[Qwernt]

The deciding factor is the thinness of the blade.

Girlinhat's drawing is correct. How deeply a blade penetrates when slashing has a lot to do with how hard it is for that blade to part the material it is trying to cut. You have to bend it with the wedge to keep the cut going. The only way to do this is with a lot of force, or a blade so thin the angle of deformation is minimal.

The sharpest blade available in meatspace is not diamond. It's obsidian. If you fracture a glass just right you can produce a nearly monomolecular wafer so thin that it will stick upright into a rock when dropped and remain there firmly. Neurosurgeons sometimes use such a piece of broken glass on a stick for procedures where they need to make perfectly clean cuts.

The reason you can't cut an I-beam in half with these (incredibly dangerous, very kid unfriendly) perfectly fractured glass slivers is that glass isn't hard enough and your sliver shatters when you try to cut anything. Adamantite is strong enough, and probably would pass the stuck-into-a-rock-when-barely-dropped test with flying colors. You would also be able to swing it much faster.

This assumes dwarves are smart though. In game terms, the volume and contact area of an adamantite axe is the same as a steel one and not like a gigantic rounded razorblade on a stick. An axe with the normal blade profile will probably leave a nice mark on iron armor but won't necessarily penetrate like the gaze of Chuck Norris.

Now, an adamantite spear on the other hand...

One would be forced to assume a hollow blade design, and since the entire thing is made from candy, it is extremely thing throughout (untill you get to the handle).  Of course, while allowing one to simply slice through most any armor, it might have the annoying ability to sink straight into the earth as well... happily the handle would have to be large enough to hold without cutting oneself. 

[ASCIt]

Also, I read somewhere that scientists had created a scalpel they managed to sharpen to a thickness of a single atom at the edge. If this technology was applied to adamantine, the results would be...threatening, to say the least.

[Girlinhat]

When toady implements coring and plating, he'll probably also implement unwieldiness, causing that addy-over-slade axe to become an extremely slow weapon.  However, once swung, it would destroy... hmm, anything.

[psychologicalshock]

Hmm... an adamantine atom? Let's see...

the density of Iron in dwarf fortress is 7.85, the density of Adamantium is 0.2... Adamantium is about 02.5% the density of iron.

The Atomic Mass of iron, is 55.845...

~2.5% of that is 1.422~, which is our in theory atomic mass of Adamantium... this makes  Adamantium... nearly as light as Hydrogen, bein ~.4 heavier, and ~2.6 lighter than Helium...

... damn.

Wow... take a chemistry 101  course.

The density of something depends on the type of lattice it's molecules are  arranged in. That is what kind of a volume the mass inhabits . The mass of something is then how many individual molecules/atoms  are in the object - if they have a low density the mass will be low even if the individual molecules are heavy. The density of something isn't directly related to it's atomic mass. This kind of ignorance really disappoints me.

[Girlinhat]

Herpaderp this has already been pointed out.

[Dynastia]

When toady implements coring and plating, he'll probably also implement unwieldiness, causing that addy-over-slade axe to become an extremely slow weapon.  However, once swung, it would destroy... hmm, anything.

What happens if you drop one?

[forsaken1111]

When toady implements coring and plating, he'll probably also implement unwieldiness, causing that addy-over-slade axe to become an extremely slow weapon.  However, once swung, it would destroy... hmm, anything.

What happens if you drop one?

You breach hell and let the demons out.

[wierd]

We might be able to extrapolate a rough molarity through reaction amount requirements though.

eg, "it takes 4 wafers adamantine or 2 bars iron to make that $craft."  If we assume this is due to reactivity of the material, and losses due to oxidation and other chemical contaminants while working the material, we edge closer to a rough empirical molarity by measuring the percentage of material lost in the reaction.

Better if we examine the weights if the source wafers, and of the finished craft to better evaluate the reactivity.

Lots of guesswork, but part of the periodic table's power is its predictive qualities. Knowing how reactive something is helps constrain what period in the table.

Sadly, without also measuring the slag to have known reactant molar weights, empirical derivation will never be exact.

[Felius]

I was thinking about this. A better design for an adamantine axe might be a 2-3mm thick disc of lead covered with adamantine plating and tapered to the standard mono-atomic edge. This would give it some heft while letting it cut cleanly through most things in a single swipe without getting caught on any blocky weight in the center. Haft would be affixed to the 'bottom' of the disc (arbitrarily designated)

Would look like a bright blue lollipop from the side, and edge-on it would look like not much of anything, very small profile.

Hmm, sounds good, although I'm unsure about affixing the haft to the extremity, instead of going all the way to the center, unless it's also made of addy. An alternative would be making a similar arrangement but as an epee, making it effectively a light saber.

One thing I've been thinking is how to keep them without cutting yourself in half. Swords would certainly need to be kept in a addy scabbard, and one would need to be very careful about how to carry the disc axes.

Side note: Adamantine covered slade would likely also work best as a very thin disc, making it heavy enough to be deadly, but not so heavy it's unwieldy, and it would keep addy's sharpness advantage.

[Putnam]

We might be able to extrapolate a rough molarity through reaction amount requirements though.

eg, "it takes 4 wafers adamantine or 2 bars iron to make that $craft."  If we assume this is due to reactivity of the material, and losses due to oxidation and other chemical contaminants while working the material, we edge closer to a rough empirical molarity by measuring the percentage of material lost in the reaction.

Better if we examine the weights if the source wafers, and of the finished craft to better evaluate the reactivity.

Lots of guesswork, but part of the periodic table's power is its predictive qualities. Knowing how reactive something is helps constrain what period in the table.

Sadly, without also measuring the slag to have known reactant molar weights, empirical derivation will never be exact.

Adamantine's molar mass is given in the raws. It's the same as iron.

It's the same as iron!

[Amallar]

Well, dwarves already know how to atom smash.  It's just a matter of smashing n-1 atoms now!  Coincidentally, since the forge contains no bridges to speak up, it can be presumed that they use their face.

DWARVEN PSIONICS.

Also, I've come to realise that my previous statement on conductivity is balderdash, as applied to a practical setting.

I've come to believe that adamantine is a materialisation of quantum strings anchored by the micro-singularities that ensue from slade's hyperdensity; that is the only rational explanation for its wafer/weave qualities.

In addition, it explains the ionisation that comes from adamantine edges despite its lack of conductivity; quantum strings are theoretically capable of conveying vast amounts of external energy into a closed system while being unaffected by mundane energies exerted upon them, as they are singular conductors of energy that is only accessable on a subatomic level. The stringitons (as we'll call them for this purpose) would normally travel in a closed circuit within an item made up of weaves of quantum strings; they would escape, however, as the strings cut off as they approach a monomic edge. From this, we have the ripple effect exerted by adamantine edges.

Adamantine, as a material that is not actually matter (or even energy, really), would have nigh invulnerability and nominal weightlessness. While these strings would normally have no weight, the singularities that anchor them do; being superdense, they have a significant amount of weight that is not observable by normal means. In addition, sufficient kinetic energy may disrupt the singularities that anchor these strings.

THE ONLY RATIONAL EXPLANATION.

[Girlinhat]

I believe you've misplaced the definition of rational.

Everything is going smoothly in the forums.  Carry on.

[khearn]

One thing I've been thinking is how to keep them without cutting yourself in half. Swords would certainly need to be kept in a addy scabbard, and one would need to be very careful about how to carry the disc axes.

You can keep a steel sword in a wood or even leather scabbard, so I see no reason that you'd need an adamantine scabbard.

Cross section (blue is sword, white is scabbard):
   /\
  |  |
  //\\
 //  \\
 \\  //
  \\//
  |  |
   \/

The edges of the sword never cut into the scabbard because the  sides of the scabbard match the diamond shape of the sword and hold it centered.