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[Flying Dice]

How can aluminum teeth break and chew gems?

Why would they not be able to?

 * Sapphires and rubies are composed of aluminum oxide. Loosely speaking, a sapphire is rusted aluminum in a crystaline form.
 * Crystalline materials tend to break more easily along their shear lines. Just like how it's easier to break a wooden board along the grain rather than against it.
 * Impact forces and compressive forces are not identical. A gem might happen to be very dense, but it is brittle, and susceptible to shattering. Chomping down violently would be more effective than attempting to slowly crush them.
 * Aluminum has roughly four times the compressive strength of bone. It's reasonable to suggest that aluminum based bone might be better for crushing than calcium/phosphorous based bone.
 * Finally, keep in mind that aluminum need not be the only material. Your teeth are not purely calcium phosphate either.

The premise here is simply that dragons requires aluminum for their skeletal structure, just like your skeleton requires calccium and phosphorous. But aluminum is not a material in great abundance in plants or animals. So to grow larger they require an alternate source, and certain gemstones are suitable. This is why baby dragons need to eat lots of gems, but adult dragons don't. Once the skeleton is fully grown, they don't require the aluminum intake they once did. This also explains the hoarding tendency of adult dragons: they're collecting gems to provide for their young.

Aluminum could not easily take a place analogous to calcium because they are in different groups on the periodic table and therefore have radically different chemical properties.
(Aluminum is in Group 13, Calcium is in Group 2)

Si-based lifeforms are pretty much standard for any sort of fiction that wants non-Ca based species as their starfish aliens. I don't see why having Al-based dragons is any less acceptable in fiction.

First, Ca is the abbreviation for Calcium, not for Carbon, Secondly, silicon based lifeforms only make sense because Silicon and Carbon are in the same elemental group.

I realize that. I was referring to the primary element in bone structure, which was actually relevant to the previous posts. I was probably not clear in one point (bolded) enough, where I probably should have said "lifeforms with Ca based skeletal structures", but to be perfectly honest it shouldn't have been hard to extrapolate what I was talking about from context. And I tend to assume that people have knowledge of at least the abbreviations of a few of the more commonly discussed elements (among other things), but that might just be me. Even assuming that I am a complete moron with no knowledge of chemistry, there was a periodic table linked not long before that. 

On an unrelated note:


DO WANT.

[Sean Mirrsen]

An oversized, cute, but subliminally creepy paperweight. Why would you need one?

[TheBronzePickle]

To be subliminally creepy. Trust me, being subliminally creepy is very useful.

Unless you're trying to make friends. Being subliminally creepy can be offputting.

[kaijyuu]

A proper paintjob could probably reduce the creepiness.

[TheBronzePickle]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Bohandas]

Twilight Sparkle obviously represents the false prophet spoken of in the Book of Revelations because she hangs out with a dragon.

EDIT: Also, Fluttershy represents Jesus, due to the events at the end of Dragonshy

[Jacob/Lee]

Crookedtrees scares me slightly a lot.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Dsarker]

Twilight Sparkle obviously represents the false prophet spoken of in the Book of Revelations because she hangs out with a dragon.

EDIT: Also, Fluttershy represents Jesus, due to the events at the end of Dragonshy

Not just Jesus. Remember, she's afraid of the dragon too, so she represents Mary.

[Dermonster]

Crookedtrees scares me slightly a lot.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

snip

Who the hell is crookedtreAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[Dsarker]

Crookedtrees scares me slightly a lot.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

snip

Who the hell is crookedtreAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Look, if you people keep doing this sort of stuff, I'll go and find all the MLP creepy images I can and post them all whenever anyone is d'awwwwing. You don't want that.

[Jacob/Lee]

Crookedtrees scares me slightly a lot.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

snip

Who the hell is crookedtreAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Look, if you people keep doing this sort of stuff, I'll go and find all the MLP creepy images I can and post them all whenever anyone is d'awwwwing. You don't want that.

*cold stare* You wouldn't.

[Dsarker]

Crookedtrees scares me slightly a lot.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

snip

Who the hell is crookedtreAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Look, if you people keep doing this sort of stuff, I'll go and find all the MLP creepy images I can and post them all whenever anyone is d'awwwwing. You don't want that.

*cold stare* You wouldn't.

Oh, it's good to see someone still trusting in human nature....hahahahaha.

[BowlSoldier]

Don't taunt him, I plan on trying to sleep soon.

[TheBronzePickle]

I don't think you'd have an easy time creeping me out. I've had to work with some pretty eldritch things before, even in real life, so you'd have to give me something far worse than a picture.

[Dsarker]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)