Elemental

I’m a sucker for movies featuring the four elements of Empedocles (and popularized by Aristotle): Earth, Water, Air, Fire. Thus, despite the less than stellar reviews, I watched Pixar’s latest: Elemental. Not willing to shell out cash, I borrowed the DVD from my local library.

 

What’s the story about? There are four populations of elemental beings: Earth, Water, Air, Fire. While most folks live with other folks of the same element in rural areas, the shiny metropolis brings together the different elements – some well-established, some looking to start a new life. The trouble is that it’s hard for elements to co-exist in the same space without causing physical problems. That’s especially true for Fire. It burns Earth. It boils Water. (Oddly, I don’t recall noticing problems between Fire and Air even though you’d think that Fire would consume the oxygen in air as fuel.)

 

The Earth folks look like plants, seeds, and earth – they’re solid. The Water folks are distinguished by being liquid and transparent-ish. Air folks look like clouds. These three fit into the well-known phases of matter: solid, liquid, gas. In chemistry, a substance can transition between phases at the appropriate pressure and temperature. In fact, the boundary that separates phases define melting and boiling points where two phases co-exist at equilibrium. At the triple point, all three can co-exist. My first-year college students should be able to identify all these on a phase diagram. Fire doesn’t fit into this story. It’s not a substance, it’s chemistry in the midst of transformation.

 

In Elemental, there are no phase changes for the most part. Each elemental being maintains its properties. But there can be problems on physical contact. Water gets other folks wet. Air folks get annoyed when someone walks through them instead of going around. The biggest problem, though, is Fire. These folks have to literally tiptoe around their neighbors, being careful not to touch them physically lest they actually cause a change of phase. Fire can burn earth causing it to be consumed or parts to “drop off”. Water can be boiled into what seems like nothing (should it be Air?) which sorta kills its existence. So what happens when an attraction forms between a goofy Water-based individual and the protagonist from the Fire clan?

 

In the beginning, they can’t touch. And then somehow by the end of the story they can, because they have somehow “changed”. There’s no explanation how or why. I posit that they manage some sort of insulation in between. An air gap perhaps? The movie doesn’t support this – that physical touch seems to be, well, a touchstone. Maybe there’s a thin layer of oil. That allows the fire to keep burning without evaporating the water? I’m coming up empty-handed for reasonable physical explanations. Maybe unknown magic should be invoked. And the point of the movie is the emotional relationships – and somehow those transcend and transform the physical, I don’t know how.

 

In the physical world there are phase boundaries between solids and liquids, liquids and gases, solids and gases. (These also exist between different solid phases of which there can be many, especially at higher pressures.) My students should also be able to locate and tell me the definition of the critical point, where the boundary between liquid and gas seemingly dissolves. There are some videos showing the disappearance of the “horizon” that separates them, but frankly they’re not terribly exciting. I suppose you could call the supercritical fluid a new phase of sorts. I suppose you could also call plasma a separate phase, and maybe that’s where Fire fits.

 

I don’t have much else to say about the mostly forgettable movie, other than I like how Fire has the best food. Hot and spicy! My kind of folks. They also make the best chemists, crafters, and engineers. The manipulation of glass scenes in the movie are cool; I mean hot. What on earth would we do without fire?