When discussing Aristotle’s elaboration of the four elements as the foundation of matter in my first day of an introductory chemistry class, I used to spend five seconds poking fun at the 2010 movie The Last Airbender. I only watched it once (for free on DVD) and I thought it was very poor. I had high expectations. An interesting theme that incorporated Earth, Water, Air, Fire, into daily life. A famous director. What could go wrong? It was a disappointing mess. Elemental was not great, but much better. And I had recently proposed teaching a non-majors class titled Earth, Water, Air, Fire, Life!
Then several years ago, a student suggested that I watch the Nickelodeon animated TV series that the movie was based on: Avatar, the Last Airbender. A second student piped up to support the first one and both thought the TV series was very well done. I’m very glad that two brave students on the first day of class were willing to challenge me on my poking fun at The Last Airbender. I should say they didn’t think the movie was all that good either, so we were in agreement there, but they encouraged me to give the TV series a chance given my interests in ancient ideas about elements. I nodded politely in response. But in my mind, I was skeptical. I associated the name Nickelodeon with children’s cartoons. (I didn’t watch these growing up in a different country.) Could anything good come out of there particularly when I associated it with Sponge Bob Square Pants (which admittedly I haven’t watched either).
Some years passed. I forgot about it. But then this summer something prompted me to watch the TV series. Maybe it was a conversation with my summer research students or maybe prompted by something I read, I don’t remember why. Anyway, I look at my local library catalog and they had the DVDs of almost the entire series (missing one disc in Season 3). So, I settled down to watch Season 1. Episodes are just 20 minutes long, and they were good! The main protagonists were interesting characters and I found the story engaging. I also cheered whenever Appa, the flying bison, got something interesting to do. Appa reminds me of the enigmatic Cat-Bus in My Neighbor Totoro.
I’m most of the way through Season 1. My quick synopsis: there are four nations and each of them has practitioners in the art of manipulating their associated element. The Fire nation has attacked the other three and has been dominant. Remnants of the Earth and Water nations have fled or are in hiding, protecting themselves from the conquering Fire nation. The Air nation seems to have mostly disappeared. The main protagonist, Aang, is the reincarnated Avatar who supposedly can be a master of all four elements and end the war. But he’s only twelve years old, and having learned air-bending skills when he was young, still needs to master the other elements. Hence: Avatar, The Last Airbender.
The most visual
aspect is how to manipulate the element of your specialty to do your will. Earth-benders
manipulate the stuff of earth from the ground itself. Water-benders can move
water to do their will. Fire-benders seem to mostly create fire and launch them
as fireballs (great for war). Air-benders can move air and utilize its currents
in their own movement. Three things seem to be needed to manipulate an element:
innate propensity, the movement of your arm, and mental focus. Not everyone in
a nation has the ability to bend matter. Those that do undergo training to
learn the mental focus and the arm movements. Manipulating matter mainly
consists of being able to collect it, shape it, and throw it, often against the
force of gravity. It’s similar to magic.
Of the four elements, air is the lightest and should be the easiest to manipulate against gravity. From a molecular perspective, you need to apply higher pressures in one vicinity to channel the molecules into a lower pressure area. It’s not obvious how one would do that, but a skilled air-bender can generate powerful winds and cyclones suggesting that quite a bit of energy may be involved. Since N2 makes up almost 80% of our atmosphere, perhaps an air-bender has a special connection to these molecules in their gaseous form and can magically command or will them to move in a particular way. Essentially the air-bender needs to overcome the entropy and cause these molecules to take a low probability macroscopic arrangement.
For water, only one substance is involved: molecular H2O. Perhaps water-bending is similar to air-bending in this regard. The water-bender has an affinity to manipulate the movements of this molecule and overcome gravity. I’ve seen water benders create waves, push water, pull water, and turn it into ice. So the water-bender needs to also have the magical ability to control the hydrogen-bonding between water molecules. Essentially the water-bender uses arm movements that cause bulk water to mimic that same movement. Maybe there’s a hidden force that can be turned on and off by focusing the mind that provides an unseen action-at-a-distance relationship between the arms/hands and the substance H2O.
Earth is a little trickier since there are a whole bunch of substances that make up the earth. Sand is mostly silica but rocks can be made up of all sorts of elements. The primary distinction between Earth and its Water and Air counterparts is its solidity. Air-benders manipulate the gaseous state. Water-benders manipulate the liquid state. Earth-benders manipulate the solid state. But there seem to be limits. Earth-benders don’t manipulate all solid substances. They seem to certainly move ‘natural’ non-man-made stuff, but there is some inconsistency on whether they can manipulate man-made solids: concrete, metal alloys, and the like. So are they limited to some elements but not others? I don’t know. Could water-benders manipulate pure ethanol or mercury which are also liquids? Or are they restricted to H2O? An air-bender who manipulates O2 could be a killer. Can Aang move different gaseous substances in different ways? I don’t know.
The fire-benders seem to mostly use their art to create fire and launch it as a projectile. Chemically to make ‘fire’ you just need a combustible material and energy to get the chemical reaction started. There are small amounts of methane and other combustible gases in the atmosphere. Do fire-benders essentially manipulate the reaction of methane with oxygen? That might be a sort of air-bending? There’s no sign that they start using a solid combustible. And water seems to put out their fire. Or maybe they use friction as an energy source? Again, I don’t know.
The chemist in me seems to be trying to peg element-bending abilities with the chemical substances most involved. But maybe there’s a better way to think about it that I haven’t stumbled upon. Regardless I’m still enjoying the TV series and I’m glad my students encouraged me to give it a chance!
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