Wizards and wands! Sorcerers and secrets!

Potions and magic! Can this be a true story?

by Meg Moss, art by Dave Clark

Secrets of the Alchemists

Can you turn gold into something really valuable, like a cupcake?

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This tomb painting shows ancient Egyptian metal-smiths busy at their craft.

An old castle. A small room. Inside, a stone furnace burns brightly. Foul-smelling

smoke fills the air. Odd tools, strange glass jars, and small bone cups clutter the table. Two robed figures bend over the fire gazing into a bubbling pot. Is it gold yet? Have they at last found the secret?

The year is 1548. All over Europe, alchemists are busy trying to turn ordinary metals into gold. Alas, they are doomed to fail. But along the way, they invent some-thing much more important: the science we call chemistry.

But that’s the end of the story. Let’s start at the beginning.

Ancient SecretsAlchemy traces its roots back to the metal-smiths and glass-makers of ancient Egypt. Thousands of years ago, these craftsmen mastered the art of getting copper, silver, and gold out of rock. They learned to mix metals

to make strong weapons and brass that looked just like gold. They made glass from sand and ash, and colored it with metal dust to make fake gems. They kept their recipes secret. That made them seem mysterious and even magical to the rest of the world.

While the Egyptians made things, the ancient Greeks wondered about big questions. What is everything made of? What makes a rock a rock, and not a tree? And how can one thing change into another? Combine the crafts of the Egyptians with the curiosity of the Greeks and what do you get? Alchemy.

An alchemist’s workshop in the good old days.

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Can We Keep a Secret?Alchemists used secret codes to hide their work. They wrote their recipes in puzzling riddles and mysterious pictures. They didn’t want their secrets stolen or put to evil use. They also feared the Church, which frowned on alchemy. Adding to the confusion, no two alchemists used the same symbols!

waterearth air fire

iron mercury silver gold tin lead

vinegar glass urine sulfur an hour a day

to powder to boil to burn to dissolve

Earth, Air, Water, and Fire? One Greek thinker named Aristotle had an odd idea. He said that everything in the universe is made of four basic ingredients: earth, air, water, and fire. Think about a burning log, he said. It must contain fire, since flames are coming out of it. The liquid sweating out of the log means there’s water inside. The ash left behind is a kind of earth, and the smoke is a type of air. What makes things different is the amount of each of these four elements inside it.

If Aristotle was right, then it should be possible to change one thing into

Born: Alexandria, Egypt, 300 BCE

Job: God of wisdom

Likes: Inspiring people to write books

Peeves: Bad spelling!

Hermes was not one person. It was

a cover name used by many writers

of early alchemy books. But later

alchemists didn’t know this. They

mistook Hermes for the world’s

busiest author, who knew everything!

Hermes

Trismegistus

Chinese alchemy had five elements: earth,

fire, water, metal, and wood.

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The real secret of immortality is a

rechargeable battery.

Jabir ibn Hayyan (also called Geber)Born: Iran, 721 Job: Court Alchemist to Harun al-Rashid Likes: New acids, secret codes Peeves: Ignorance Some people consider ibn Hayyan

to be the first great chemist. He discovered many useful chemicals, especially acids. He used his chemistry to improve glass-making, metal-working, and many other trades.

another—say, turn lead into gold—by taking out or adding earth or fire until the balance was changed to the “gold” mix. This idea was completely wrong, but it sounded convincing. And it inspired generations of alchemists.

Alchemists also believed that metals grew in the earth, like plants. Gold was clearly the perfect metal. Rare and beautiful, it never rusted or tarnished. Miners often found bits of gold in the lead they dug out of the earth. Did that mean that the lead was “ripening” into gold? What if they could speed up the process? They got to work trying.

Some Arab alchemists went looking for the “seed” that made everything grow and change. Everything that grew should have some “change spirit” inside, right? If they could get it in pure form, this stuff could change one thing into another, cure disease, and make anyone who ate it live forever. They called this miraculous substance the philosopher’s stone. Many alchemists devoted their lives to finding it—though they never did.

Tricks and TreatsBy the year 1300, alchemists all over Europe were at work in smoky workshops searching for the philosopher’s stone.

They mixed things together to see what would happen. They ground up rocks and baked them and dissolved them with acid. They learned how

This fanciful picture shows earth, air, water, and fire with their pets. I have

already grown to

perfection!

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Roger Bacon Born: England,

1214 Job: Friar, math

teacher, alchemist

Likes: Logic,

optics, gardening

Peeves: Fuzzy thinking

Bacon was a great mathematician

and may have built the first

telescope. But he is most famous

for figuring out the secret to

making gunpowder, probably by

studying some brought back from

China, where it was invented

many centuries before.

to separate mixtures into their different ingredients. They mas-tered many

ways of making fire, because they believed that heat was the key to change. Alchemists didn’t always understand what they were doing or why it worked. But they made many useful discoveries. They discovered chemical mixtures that would change

color when poured on different metals. That gave them an easy way to tell brass from gold. They figured out how to separate gold from rock. They made new dye colors that wouldn’t run. They cooked up strong acids from vinegar and wine. And they invented many mixing tools that chemists still use today.

Of course, not all alchemists were honest. There were also many tricksters who pretended to do alchemy to get wealthy patrons to give them money. That was one way to make gold!

Potent Potions One alchemist named Hennig Brand thought it might be possible to make gold from human pee, since, well, both are yellow. He collected 50 buckets of pee, boiled it, and stored it in his basement until it turned black. Then he distilled it until only a small, solid lump was left.

Does this look like a recipe? It is! In this coded picture, the sunny king is sulfur, and the moony queen is mercury. Use fire (the dragon) to join them so they grow (trees) into gold.

Alchemist Hennig Brand tried to turn pee into gold, but discovered a new glowing element, phosphorus, instead.

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Everybody knows that germs cause

disease!

But they didn't know back then!

Investigating Alche

my

Science historian W

illiam

Newman has tried out

some of the alchemists’

experiments. He

wants to understan

d

how they worked.

One recipe he tried

was written by Isa

ac

Newton. Newton is

famous for figuring

out gravity. But h

e

was also an alchem

ist.

Newton’s recipe made

this purple metal,

a blend of copper

and antimony that

alchemists called “the

net.” Newman hopes

to

show that Newton

and

other alchemists

did their work

as serious science.

Was it gold? Alas, no. His lump was white and waxy. It also glowed in the dark and caught fire when exposed to air. So what was it? Brand had accidentally discovered phosphorus, one of the real ele ments. Eventually he did make some money by showing off his amazing glowing rock.

Other alchemists also found new ways to use their mixing talents.

In the 1500s, an alchemist named Paracelsus got curious about what causes sickness. He was one of the first to suggest that illness might come from invisible germs outside the body. He made healing drugs out of minerals and plants, and today is considered one of the founders of modern medicine.

A New ScienceSo what happened to the alchemists? By the 1600s, some young alchemists started to question the old ideas.

Meet the AlchemistsIsaac NewtonBorn: England,

1643 Job: Mathematician,

all-around genius

Likes: Order

Peeves: Other

scientists

The great Isaac

Newton discovered the basic laws

of motion, gravity, and optics, and

pretty much invented modern

mathematics. He was also a keen

alchemist. In one of his notebooks,

he wondered whether “vapors” in

the air might give animals life and

make metals grow, and if these

could be harnessed to make gold.

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John DeeBorn: England,

1527

Job: Astrologer and

alchemist to Queen

Elizabeth I

Likes: Mathematics,

tea with the queen

Peeves: Being

accused of witchcraft

As the queen’s fortune-teller, Dee

advised her to explore the world.

He also invented spy codes and

tried to summon angels to teach

him the original language of Eden.

Marvin must be an element because I can’t make him

change.

Can We Make Gold? Is it possible to turn lead into gold? Could we do it with modern science?

Maybe, a little. But mostly, no. Why not? Because both lead and

gold are elements. We now know that the real building blocks of the universe are atoms, the smallest bits of matter. About 100 different kinds of atoms combine to make everything in the universe. These atoms are the real elements.

Atoms join up to make all kinds of compounds. But atoms themselves do

not change, except in huge nuclear reactors or in the fiery hearts of stars.

Pure elements are made of only one kind of atom. Pure lead has only lead atoms in it. Pure gold has only gold atoms. To change lead into gold, you’d need to change all of its atoms. And that’s hard to do!

Modern scientists have made a few atoms of gold by breaking up larger atoms in nuclear reactors. But it costs much more to make gold this way than the gold is worth.

Alchemists invented many of the tools they used. The triangular pot is a crucible, used to melt metals. The goose-necked jar was for vaporizing liquids.

Robert Boyle, born in Ireland in 1627, was one of these new thinkers. Boyle was curious about ev-erything and loved to experiment. His experiments made him ques-tion the old idea that everything was made of earth, air, fire, and water.

In one experiment, Boyle noticed that a piece of wood sealed in a jar without air did not burn. This meant that fire was not “in” the wood. Instead, fire seemed to need something in the air (we now know that’s oxygen).

And there were other problems. Elements were supposed to be the basic building blocks of everything.

So they should not themselves be made of other, more basic things. But Boyle was able to separate earth, air, and water into many simpler ingredients. That must mean they weren’t really elements.

Boyle instead suggested that the real elements were substances like iron that cannot be broken down into simpler ingredients. The alchemists

Why isn’t this working?

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Ah ha! You see, strict methods are a good thing!

There's such a thing as too much of a good thing!

had already found some, such as gold, silver, sulfur, and phosphorus. Scientists kept adding to the list. Now we know of about 120 elements. Each element is a different size of atom, the smallest bits of matter.

Boyle also had a new way of working. He measured everything carefully (alchemists usually didn’t). He took notes and shared his findings with other scientists. He didn’t hide them in secret codes. He wanted others to repeat his experiments. Only lots of testing would show if his ideas were right. These practices began to turn alchemy into science. Boyle dropped the “al” and became a chemist.

A century later, a chemist named Antoine de Lavoisier finally figured out what is going on in a burning log. The wood is not releasing earth, air, water, and fire. Instead, heat breaks apart molecules in the wood. The carbon and hydrogen atoms that were in the wood combine with oxygen from the air to make new molecules of carbon dioxide, water vapor, and ash.

All chemical change is just that: breaking apart and putting together molecules. And molecules are built out of atoms, the real elements.

Lavoisier was still asking the questions that inspired the alchemists: what is everything made of, and how do things change? But the way he worked, using strict scientific methods, was new.

Alchemists never did manage to turn lead into gold. But perhaps they would be pleased to know that they left us something even more valuable, a whole new branch of science.

Nicholas Flamel

Born: France, 1330 Job: Bookseller Likes: Making money Peeves: Dying

Flamel claimed to have made the philosopher’s stone from a recipe in an old book he found at a bookstall. Flamel died in 1418 and is buried in Paris—or so his tombstone says. Rumors that he is still alive persist.

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