What is your novel worth if at its most pivotal moment it uses a 1st year chemistry’s most glaring mistake as a plot crutch?
Let’s take a look at Frank Herbert’s Dune. When Paul and Jessica escape from Arrakeen and crash their topter, they lose a backpack with critical supplies under a sandslide. How does Paul solve this problem? Well, he does, in a chemically impossible way.
As per Herbert, spice is ‘highly alcaline’. Paul pours ‘acid crystals’ from a battery and dissolves them in water. Of common acids, only organic acids are solid. Solid acid crystals are useless in a battery because they cannot enter into chemical reactions. Paul pours spice into the acid solution, in order to arrive at a foaming reaction. This is a very common misconception about acids and bases caused by widespread use of vinegar and baking soda in middle and high school science classes. School drop-offs like Herbert usually live the rest of their lives, in the mistaken belief that a reaction of vinegar and baking soda is a reaction between an acid and a base. Herbert makes this same mistake and uses it as a plot crutch. This is sad.
How difficult was it to suggest that spice was a carbonate? I do not think that it was difficult at all. But Herbert does not bother to make it right and reinforces and perpetuates the widespread misconception. You could argue that the founder of science-fiction, Jules Verne, used many shortcuts in his depiction of metallurgy and chemistry in his The Mysterious Island. Yes, he did, but in every instance it was a simplification of a complex, multi-step technological process. On the contrary, Herbert makes a 4th grader’s mistake in a blatantly simple chemical reaction. This is what happens when a school drop-out is allowed to write science-fiction and is not being fact-checked.