Abracadabra – this molecule is now an atom! Next, I will make an elephant disappear!
Molecules are comprised of atoms. We can remove atoms from molecules. However, the function is not “change;” it is “reduction.” We cannot change a water molecule into a water atom. We can reduce it to two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. Those atoms were present in the molecule, and would not change atomic structure when separated.
It is an intriguing argument that a car can be changed into car parts, but that, too, is a matter of “reducing” the car into its component parts. If we were to take a mountain of stone, and break it down into rocks, we would not have “changed” the stone into a rock. We will have reduced the stone to a mountain of rocks.
The best argument that it can be done is “you know what was meant.” Even if most people “know what was meant,” it means only that most people accept incorrect answers without giving much thought to what was asked. As acceptance for altered terms increases, it becomes common sense or common thought. It works on gravitational theory in that as it is commonly accepted, it consumes or amasses with it the ideas and thoughts that otherwise would be “commonly” distinguishable.
It is the reason we fail to learn from history. It is as if we say “it has always been that way, but today it is different.”
Uncommon sense challenges convention, considers possibility, and creates the ideas and things that cannot be created by people who accept “change” to mean “reduce.”
Just as the atom has always been a component of a molecule, today it is also. Just as removing six bolts and a door does not alter the bolts or the door, we have not changed the car. We have merely reduced it, and gained a component door that did not change through removal.
I do, however, now have a confession. I know I promised to make an elephant disappear, but I do not know how magicians create the illusion. I know it can be done by reducing one to its atomic components, though stopping at molecular components would save quite a bit of time.
Before I actually make an elephant disappear, however, I need to give some thought to the reassembly process. Otherwise it seems rather cruel, not to mention terribly expensive considering the price of elephants these days.
