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[CapnMikey]

Burning adamantine!  That should be the most energetic reaction possible, even able to reduce the aluminum from bauxite, and giving you adamantine oxide, which would be an impossibly good heat insulator.

[Alastar]

@ Heph: Adamantine doesn't flex or deform before it snaps, so extraction isn't the only problem. If we assume that this only applies at room temperature and can be changed with moderate heat, or that we'd need some arcane process to make it flexible, it still leaves us with a problem regarding adamantine threads. Clothes would be perfectly rigid, sutures would tear through the stitched flesh at the slightest provocation.
Assuming that adamantine keeps some sort of natural structure also raises questions about the edge value - with 10k for other metal and 20k for obsidian, 100k already seems ridiculous; more so if the material is known not to be amorphous.

Something else that is very odd: Most substances are denser as a solid than as a liquid, water is a huge exception. Adamantine is 13 times as dense in its liquid state.

*

Some nice attempts were made to justify some individual properties of adamantine, but they don't work all at once. The whole thing only makes sense if we postulate secret processes to make its properties whatever it needs to be for any given application, which is as good an explanatiion as 'faerie magic!'.

[Shades]

Some nice attempts were made to justify some individual properties of adamantine, but they don't work all at once. The whole thing only makes sense if we postulate secret processes to make its properties whatever it needs to be for any given application, which is as good an explanatiion as 'faerie magic!'.

It's just the same law of physics that causes liquids to flow in blocks of sevenths, which allows water to freeze and thaw to create matter, and allows any mountain, no matter how big to be supported on a single column of sand.

[Alastar]

Those quirks don't directly touch the materials system though, and are no reason to go 'Nothing makes sense anyway! Let's have hydrogen hammers hit hardest!'.

Fixing engine limitations would involve a lot of work, testing and possibly unacceptable amounts of processing power. Fixing nonsensical table entries doesn't.

[Shades]

Fixing engine limitations would involve a lot of work, testing and possibly unacceptable amounts of processing power. Fixing nonsensical table entries doesn't.

That assumes the table entry is nonsensical. But it isn't really. Take the edge stat you mentioned the difference between metal, at 10k, and obsidian, at 20k, is 10k, the different between obsidian and adamantine, at 100k, is 80k. So either obsidian has twice the edge metal does (assume 0 means nothing) and adamantine has 5 times the edge of that, or the difference between obsidian and adamantine is eight times greater than that between metal and obsidian.

Neither is outside the realm of possibility assuming max edge indicates the sharpness and when you consider DF has the same value for all it's metals this seems unlikely.

[NW_Kohaku]

Something else that is very odd: Most substances are denser as a solid than as a liquid, water is a huge exception. Adamantine is 13 times as dense in its liquid state.

Oh, if nobody minds me taking my cynic hat off for a while, I'd like to take a crack at this one...

The reason that objects have the density they do depends upon their atomic weight (which multiply the density, obviously), how energized (hot) the atoms or molecules are (with the random motion tending to make objects less dense), and their magnetic properties (which can attract or repel other atoms, making them more or less dense).

Water notably becomes less dense upon freezing because its process of crystalization requires all of the water molecules to align in a way that water's inherent magnetism from having two (positive) hydrogen atoms on the end of a (negative) oxygen atom requires those atoms to crystalize further away from one another because with the random (heat) motion on a molecular level, even at freezing temperatures, is enough to vibrate between having aligned and unaligned magnetic fields.  If you actually keep making ice colder, it will eventually get denser than room temperature water.

So then, adamantine, if you compare, has, at a liquid state, a density comparable to some lighter-than-iron elements like Scandium in its liquid state.  (Of course, said liquid state is at "middle of the sun" temperatures, which would be driving the whole thing to be even less dense, so we might compare this to denser metals, and just say that it's the heat doing it.)

So what we are dealing with is a heavier metal than its density really implies, that instead has a VERY powerful magnetic property repulsing the rest of the adamantine on a molecular/atomic level.  I don't know if this is the sort of property a metal can even display (metals can generally bond with one another in crystaline form just fine), so it might need to be a molecule of some sort.  An extremely powerful magnetic repulsion can account for its low density, even if it is made of relatively dense materials.  Its glass-like shattering may even be accounted for in this way by saying that, like Pig Iron, when you make a crystaline structure TOO rigid, it tends to shatter before it bends.  It may be best to think of it as an extremely complex molecule whose combined magnetic fields ensure that the entire structure has powerful recoil against any kind of attempt to flex it out of its set shape, making an apparently impossibly rigid structure.

Of course, that raises the question of how to account for it's occasional cloth-like properties, which imply a total lack of that rigid crystaline structure, even at room temperature, even when whatever put it into that state is no longer being applied (so you can't simply say "magnets", since you'd have to wear said magnets all the time, and that probably wouldn't even work, anyway).  The only thing I can offer up to explain that is that you would simply have to go the "acid" route and chemically change the molecule into a completely different molecule completely, one without all the properties that adamantine normally displays, but which dwarves still call adamantine because they don't really know better.  This might be the "non-Newtonian solid" form of Adamantine.  By being freer-flowing, though, it should also be denser than normal adamantine.

[Shades]

Of course, that raises the question of how to account for it's occasional cloth-like properties,

Do we know it has cloth-like properties? I see nothing in the raws other than it can be used as clothing, although I could easily have missed it, my knowledge of 2010 raws is no where near as good as 40d.

It could well be that the clothing produced is very stiff and dwarves just put up with it because it's adamantine. Think of the thread as wires of the metal-like adamantine, weaved together to make whatever you want. Not very comfortable I admit, but means it can keep a somewhat rigid structure.

[Alastar]

We aren't talking 'this is slightly uncomfortable' kind of stiff. We're talking 'the hem of my shirt just cut me in half' kind of stiff.

[Shades]

We aren't talking 'this is slightly uncomfortable' kind of stiff. We're talking 'the hem of my shirt just cut me in half' kind of stiff.

The things people do for fashion....

As long as it was rounded and not a sharp edge it shouldn't cut though. Well unless it was hit with something like a hammer and the force had to go somewhere (the same reason it's dumb to wear steel toecaps on a building site..)

[robolee]

well I read through a couple of pages of this and there's one thing that everybody has overlooked (I only read through a couple of pages, forgive me if someone else has said this), the adamantine that is mined would very likely be impure (as with any ore), the impurities in the metal could lead it to be more workable, then when a certain heat threshold is passed(whilst forging) the bonds holding the adamantine and impurities together break and combust/combine with other molecules, whilst the adamantine molecules join back together in a very strong form, which makes it practically unworkable when cooled again.

I agree some of the properties are a bit too high, but considering how hard it is to obtain I think that they are justified.

[Rowanas]

I don't know if this has been brought up, but perhaps the metal we call adamantine is actually an alloy. It may be dug out of the ground as an alloy, melted and worked at the much lower heat values of the alloy and then worked with that fantastic Dwarven skill so that when the other metal is extracted, it leaves the adamantine in whatever shape the dwarf had worked it into. When the dwarves want to melt it down, they get some of the metal that adamantine bonds with, heat both metals until they start bonding and from there the adamantine can be turned into whatever shape, or just left as bars like other metal.

It retains the strength and weight of adamantine, while getting over the heating problem.

To extract it from the ground in the first place, miners find seams in the adamantine, where the easily cut other metal hasn't bonded with the adamantine, allowing them to extract and use the chunk of adamantine.

- = other metal
* = adamantine alloy

---------    <--- cut here
-*****-
-*****-
-*****-
---------    <--- cut here

^------^
    |
    -------cut here

DAMMIT! While I typed someone ninja'd me!

[VoidPointer]

OK, at this point, we're pretty much just talking about adamantine as if it was made from the stuff lightsabers are made of in Star Wars - the blade grows or weakens to a flicker (like when Obi Wan was fighting Vader) or solidifies for completely arbitrary reasons.

I guess now it's actually a cold plasma material that dwarves control through accidental telepathy simply by being Armok's Chosen People, and which they make into weapons only because of thoughts for "MORE DAKKA" or some such noise, and would be able to turn into gattling guns and spaceships by mistake if only they knew what those were.

I'm... sorry? I felt like my suggestion, while physically impossible under SI, was at least internally consistent. I was not trying to anger you. If it helps, think of it this way: Steel wool is bendy. Heat and hammer it (what I meant by "high energy state") and the strands weld together, making it less bendy. That's what I was getting at with the wafer-making tomfoolery.

Adamantine doesn't flex or deform before it snaps, so extraction isn't the only problem.

This, however, is a problem. My suggestion requires a modelling (or rather, in-raw acknowledgement) of the quanta of adamantine (strands) creating large-scale effects that the individual strands lack (hardness, inflexibility), which isn't the current model. Of course, I would submit that 1) the current in-game representation of adamantine makes no actual sense, and as such trying to explain it as-is in physical terms is a fool's errand, so we may as well seek explanations for how it could work given various assumptions, and 2) that using the material that the columns supporting the world and separating it from Hell are made of to suture wounds is too stupid even for a creature that will remove the bridge suspending the floor it is standing on over a 50 z-level pit.

Some nice attempts were made to justify some individual properties of adamantine, but they don't work all at once. The whole thing only makes sense if we postulate secret processes to make its properties whatever it needs to be for any given application, which is as good an explanatiion as 'faerie magic!'.

Of course they don't. Each suggested model is supposed to stand on its own; they aren't supposed to mesh with every other suggestion in the thread.

Unless I've misread you, and you're saying that no individual suggestion models all the properties of adamantine, in which case I agree with you. I made no attempt to explain adamantine sutures in my suggestion, because (as I mentioned above) I hate them and think they're stupid.

*science!*

Very interesting, and extremely likely if adamantine is a molecule. Of course, if there is an element found only in adamantine molecules (likely), then we might wonder at its properties as well. However, in the interest of not contemplating my navel, I'm not going to.

robolee and Rowanas seem to have (accidentally?) suggested very similar things. The main problem with this, as with the other workable suggestions in the thread, is that the raws don't currently acknowledge any such thing. Not that I consider that a count against the suggestions; I'm just saying that none of these suggestions can explain the properties of adamantine AND its raw-stated properties (as the two are inherently inconsistent), as I mentioned earlier.

[Mel_Vixen]

Soooo what kind of Molecule? Can anayone think of something (or calculate) a Molecule that has (most) properties of Adamantine? Bonuspoint of the reaction includes FOOF.

[NW_Kohaku]

As long as it was rounded and not a sharp edge it shouldn't cut though. Well unless it was hit with something like a hammer and the force had to go somewhere (the same reason it's dumb to wear steel toecaps on a building site..)

Actually, Mythbusters disproved that one - the amount of force it takes to actually deform the steel toes of steel toe boots to cut through your toes is an amount of force that would essentially have liquified your entire foot without the protection.

Also, the properties of adamantine are not like, say, gold, which you can make a thread out of.  Gold is very malleable.  Adamantine will shatter before it ever bends.  It's like making a dress out of glass or hardened plastic.

well I read through a couple of pages of this and there's one thing that everybody has overlooked (I only read through a couple of pages, forgive me if someone else has said this), the adamantine that is mined would very likely be impure (as with any ore), the impurities in the metal could lead it to be more workable, then when a certain heat threshold is passed(whilst forging) the bonds holding the adamantine and impurities together break and combust/combine with other molecules, whilst the adamantine molecules join back together in a very strong form, which makes it practically unworkable when cooled again.

I agree some of the properties are a bit too high, but considering how hard it is to obtain I think that they are justified.

The problem with that idea is that even the raw adamantine "ore" has the same imperviousness to all terrestrial temperatures as the final metal. 

Soooo what kind of Molecule? Can anayone think of something (or calculate) a Molecule that has (most) properties of Adamantine? Bonuspoint of the reaction includes FOOF.

Well, it'd have to include some kind of really, really bizzare magnetic interaction if it were to have a low density like this.  Water has its magnetic properties because the hydrogen binds in that "Micky Mouse" formation you see, one side becomes positive, while the other becomes negative, since Oxygen balances off its negative electrical charge with the two positive hydrogen charges...  You'd need to have a crystaline formation that would put rows of repeating negative and positive charges... to be able to really secure them in place, maybe the crystaline structure formed by the interacting molecules look like interlocking puzzle pieces, with cavities and knobs that fill them, so that the complex magnetic fields refuse to allow the molecules to move in any particular direction, provided you have at least one such interlocking part in every direction.

The usual suspects for this sort of thing would be Hydrogen and Carbon, but a hydrocarbon chain, of course, would never withstand the kinds of heat we are talking about.  We need to be dealing in materials which are less reactive than most materials... I almost want to say "noble gas" in the molecules, and try to come up with a BS reason for how they could be bound into a molecule in the first place... I can't really think of a metal that doesn't in some way oxidize...

I do really like the non-newtonian model. It even meshes with current production trees: Strand extraction, which provides us with the base (flexible, malleable) thread, requires no fuel and happens at a craftsdorf's workshop. It can then be woven into fabric. The low-temperature, low-pressure environment of a loom allows it to retain its flexibility. Forging it into wafers begins the re-hardening process that forging it into armor finishes. Ideally, if this paradigm were officially accepted, "melting" adamantine armor would involve strand extraction rather than a smelter, starting the process over again. The hardening process in this case would be more of a tight interweaving of the strands - they never "melt" per se, but high energy states encourage them to tangle together, forming an inflexible "shell".

Hmm... going back to this...

If it's a molecule, then perhaps there are "pure" and "impure" adamantine.  Most adamantine is morpheous, but, in the haste of Armok to seal the HFS, some of it was created too fast, and entered into an amorphous (what is technically called a "glass", although that doesn't necessarily mean what you think) solid state, where its magnetic properties are not fully realized, and the material is flexible.

TRUE adamantine will never change its shape once set, so as to seal in the HFS forever.  However, there are strands of the imperfect, amorphous material in the raw chunks of metal.  You can very carefully pluck tiny strands from the otherwise solid metal, and then must throw away the rest of the hardened shell as oversized and not terribly effective paperweights.  It's properties, though fantastic and precious, can never be put to good use as it cannot be shaped by any known dwarven means... (Of course, this still doesn't explain why magic dwarven picks can cut the material to start with, but that's a mystery even when you cut through whole mountains on a single copper pick, reducing whole mountains into collections of stone that can fit on one tile.)

Using something like an acid treatment once the flexable material is set into a proper position, you can give it a chance to reset into "true" adamantine... from which, it will never again change shape, excepting unthinkable strains actually shattering a thin enough thread of the material.

[Mel_Vixen]

It's like making a dress out of glass

Glass is a rather bad example since glassfibers can bend very well. jUst be sure you dont go over the max bending radius.

We need to be dealing in materials which are less reactive than most   materials... I almost want to say "noble gas" in the molecules, and try   to come up with a BS reason for how they could be bound into a molecule   in the first place... I can't really think of a metal that doesn't in   some way oxidize...

Sulfur-hexaflourid and Nitrogen are chemical almost innert so i would say you would not need nobles. And i don't want purple adamantine. Actually i have a proffiecient chemics Student among my friends who knows some stuff i could ask him if he can crank something out.