Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Cool Things You Could Do With Element Lad's Powers...

So, Element Lad was originally supposed to have the ability to change one element into another. In practice, that has basically evolved into the ability to point and turn any substance into any other substance, because, you know, chemistry is hard, and trying to keep track of all those elements versus compounds is a lot of work.

But let's suppose that he could really just do one element at a time.

First cool trick: change H20 into N20, and, voila, that puddle the villains are standing next to becomes laughing gas!

H2S to H20. Elevator farts no longer menace mankind. Plus some embarrassing patches for the culprit to explain away.

NaCl into HgCl, which turns normal table salt into a toxic substance.

Change all the N in the air into HE and make the villains talk funny.

Turn the neighbor's woofers into a puddle of mercury.

Si into Pb, for when those yahoos won't stop jabbering away on their cellphones.

Change the Sodium Flouride in toothpaste to Sodium Chloride, so in stead of cavity protection, you just get a mouthful of salt.

Change just the flourine in the sodium flouride in someone's toothpaste into magnesium, but leave the sodium in place, so that instead of cavity protection, they get a mouthful of explosion!

Ummm, turn all of the silver I have into gold and retire to an island somewhere nice?
Cool for me, anyway.

Good choice, gold's selling super-high right now!

Turn some of the carbon in the air to gold, and you'll be fighting global warming *and* making yourself rich!

Turn all the 2011 US Quarters into gold to drive down the price of gold.

CO2 .... into H2O would be useful for lots of people.

or CH4 into H2O

or into O3.

someone please give me Element Lad's powers!

I've always kinda wondered how his transmutation works. Is it 'easier' for him to transform elements to elements that are 'near' them on the periodic table, like Carbon into either Boron or Nitrogen?

In theory, since he's adding protons, does he generate them? Does he attract them from the surrounding environment (and perhaps even peel them off of surrounding atoms, causing nearby elements to slide down the periodic table as he steals their protons to add to the matter he's transmuting) and likewise release streams of protons from any matter that he's transmuting 'down' the periodic table by removing protons?

If that was the case, his transmutations would result in either a release of energy (down-tabling an element) or the possible destruction of nearby matter, as he strips away protons to use for his transmutation (up-tabling an element).

That would be kinda neat, if it worked that way, although it clearly doesn't, and he's always been able to turn pretty much any element into any element without any sign of one transmutation being harder than another (and occasionally able to change compounds, like water or whatever).

.

Anywho, fun uses of transmutation.

Turn the oxygen in someone's bloodstream into nitrogen, causing them to feel faint and dizzy! A minute of deep breathing will clear that up, but in the middle of a pitched fight, it would pretty much take someone right out of it, literally, 'taking their breath away.'

Change the nitrogen in the air around someone into carbon, trapping them in a porous (70% by volume) pumice-like lump of coal. Leave their head free, so they can still breath.

As the next logical step in the 'pave the Earth' initiative, turn the ocean into a giant swimming pool by changing the sodium in the sodium chloride dissolved into the seawater into yet more chlorine, chlorinating the ocean! Sure, it'll kill fifty trillion fish, but hey, it's a swimming pool now!

I wouldn't be surprised if he's been shown making diamonds out of 'thin air,' but I don't really think he should be able to transmute elements into modified forms like this.

[Although, if he created a wall of carbon, and someone like Mon-El, Star Boy and / or Sun Boy subjected it to vast pressure and / or heat, they could probably make enormous diamonds working together...)

Gold and platinum and stuff will probably have to suffice.

If he can change only part of something, and concentrates real hard, he might be able to transform part of a hunk of some element into a simple sort of patterned or designed chunk of some other element, and break away (or transmute into nitrogen and blow away) the original element surrounding it, sort of picking up a hunk of coal and creating a gold ring (a fairly simple shape to visualize) inside of it, with no outside visible effects until he crumbles the carbon and reveals the ring.

It'd be a funky way to propose. (Although, since he can only create *pure* gold, the ring would be crazy soft...)

I'm pretty sure that he has, bizarrely enough, "transmuted" coal into diamonds, or vice versa, which isn't really shifting elements at all, but restructuring carbon into a different form.

On the other end of the power fluctuation scale, it's also suggested on at least one occasion that he can only affect elements when they are not in compounds, which would make him almost completely useless, especially in the 31st century, when one would suppose that just about everything is some kind of compound.

Compounds, as in two molecules bonded together?
Like say, oxygen in it's gaseous form, O<span style="font-size: 10px;">2</span>?
That would be incredibly limiting.

Can he turn dark matter into something else?
Or something else into dark matter?

If he can add protons and electrons to atoms, is he also adding 'charm' and 'love' and other wavelengths and particles?

That's quantum stuff, right?

Computers show fractile repeat designs, could he do something like that, crystalized elements forming giant sized patterned forms?
That would be cool.
And maybe have some purpose.

I dunno'. I'm still waiting for somebody to explain in detail how his powers markedly differ from Chemical King's powers (either version).