We can hope!  Hope is cheap since it doesn't affect actual outcomes!

Keltham hung a Silent Image earlier today!  Here's what sulfuric acid actually looks like.  You can see how those dangling hydrogen atoms on the end could potentially be ripped loose from the electrons holding them in, repelled by the positive charges at the center, and go off as positively charged protons to mess around with other chemical bonds and break them and dissolve them, which is what makes an acid acidic.

Here's what electron orbitals actually look like.

It's actually a lot less complicated than the weird twisted interactions found in hanging spells?  It's just that these are different interactions, and the math is a tad more difficult.

Also they can't just manually manipulate the forces, they've got to subtly influence them with Prestidigitation to make bulk chemical interactions go differently.

Also also nobody's ever done anything like this before, so far as Keltham knows.  So they're gonna have to try a lot of stuff, and it's not actually clear which level of understanding is gonna be required to do what.

After lunch it'll be time for more experimentation using various things Keltham requested, using cheap materials he could identify, that will chemically react in ways that Keltham knows about!

Can they, for example, alter various substances, so that, when plunged into a hot flame, they burn with a different color of flame?  Not alter the flame's color directly, Prestidigitate the material so that it burns with a different color when lit?  That's a fairly direct test of their ability to mess with orbitals and potentials; it's electrons moving between orbitals that emit light of a particular energy and hence color.

Are they ready to get a lot of identical NO answers to 'Did that work?' while carefully observing for signs that anything observable went even slightly differently?

We can hope!  Hope is cheap since it doesn't affect actual outcomes!

Keltham hung a Silent Image earlier today!  Here's what sulfuric acid actually looks like.  You can see how those dangling hydrogen atoms on the end could potentially be ripped loose from the electrons holding them in, repelled by the positive charges at the center, and go off as positively charged protons to mess around with other chemical bonds and break them and dissolve them, which is what makes an acid acidic.

Here's what electron orbitals actually look like.

Protons are heavy and RIGHT-charged and clumped together by more powerful forces into nuclei despite the repulsion of similar charges; electrons are LEFT lighter and cloudlike, attracted to protons, self-repelling, and no two of them can be in the same place at the same time with the same ????.  The heavy protonic nuclei settle into a configuration of least energy, taking into account the attractive electron charges and that the protonic nuclei repel each other insofar as not electron-neutralized; the heavy protonic nuclei act as a sort of backbone for the light electron cloud.

It's actually less complicated than the weird twisted interactions found in hanging spells, in some ways?  There's a lot fewer interactions, really?  It's just that these are different interactions, and the math is a tad weirder than any individual force described in second-circle wizard textbooks.

Also they can't just manually manipulate the forces, they've got to subtly influence them with Prestidigitation to make bulk chemical interactions go differently.

Also also nobody's ever done anything like this before, so far as Keltham knows.  So they're gonna have to try a lot of stuff, and it's not actually clear which level of understanding is gonna be required to do what.

After lunch it'll be time for more experimentation using various things Keltham requested, using cheap materials he could identify, that will chemically react in ways that Keltham knows about!

Can they, for example, alter various substances, so that, when plunged into a hot flame, they burn with a different color of flame?  Not alter the flame's color directly, Prestidigitate the material so that it burns with a different color when lit?  That's a fairly direct test of their ability to mess with orbitals and potentials; it's electrons moving between orbitals that emit light of a particular energy and hence color.

Are they ready to get a lot of identical NO answers to 'Did that work?' while carefully observing for signs that anything observable went even slightly differently?

We can hope!  Hope is cheap since it doesn't affect actual outcomes!

Keltham hung a Silent Image earlier today!  Here's what sulfuric acid actually looks like.  You can see how those dangling hydrogen atoms on the end could potentially be ripped loose from the electrons holding them in, repelled by the positive charges at the center, and go off as positively charged protons to mess around with other chemical bonds and break them and dissolve them, which is what makes an acid acidic.

Here's what electron orbitals actually look like.

Protons are heavy and RIGHT-charged and clumped together by more powerful forces into nuclei despite the repulsion of similar charges; electrons are LEFT lighter and cloudlike, attracted to protons, self-repelling, and no two of them can be in the same place at the same time with the same ????.  The heavy protonic nuclei settle into a configuration of least energy, taking into account the attractive electron charges and that the protonic nuclei repel each other insofar as not electron-neutralized; the heavy protonic nuclei act as a sort of backbone for the light electron cloud.

It's actually less complicated than the weird twisted interactions found in hanging spells, in some ways?  There's a lot fewer interactions, really?  It's just that these are different interactions, and the math is a tad weirder than any individual force described in second-circle wizard textbooks.

Also they can't just manually manipulate the forces, they've got to subtly influence them with Prestidigitation to make bulk chemical interactions go differently.

Also also nobody's ever done anything like this before, so far as Keltham knows.  So they're gonna have to try a lot of stuff, and it's not actually clear which level of understanding is gonna be required to do what.

After lunch it'll be time for more experimentation using various things Keltham requested, using cheap materials he could identify, that will chemically react in ways that Keltham knows about!

Can they, for example, alter various substances, so that, when plunged into a hot fire, they burn with a different color of flame?  Not alter the flame's color directly, Prestidigitate the material so that it burns with a different color when lit?  That's a fairly direct test of their ability to mess with orbitals and potentials; it's electrons moving between orbitals that emit light of a particular energy and hence color.

Are they ready to get a lot of identical NO answers to 'Did that work?' while carefully observing for signs that anything observable went even slightly differently?

We can hope!  Hope is cheap since it doesn't affect actual outcomes!

Keltham hung a Silent Image earlier today!  Here's what sulfuric acid actually looks like.  You can see how those dangling hydrogen atoms on the end could potentially be ripped loose from the electrons holding them in, repelled by the positive charges at the center, and go off as positively charged protons to mess around with other chemical bonds and break them and dissolve them, which is what makes an acid acidic.

Here's what electron orbitals actually look like.

Protons are heavy and RIGHT-charged and clumped together by more powerful forces into nuclei despite the repulsion of similar charges; electrons are LEFT lighter and cloudlike, attracted to protons, self-repelling, and no two of them can be in the same place at the same time with the same ????.  The heavy protonic nuclei settle into a configuration of least energy, taking into account the attractive electron charges and that the protonic nuclei repel each other insofar as not electron-neutralized; the heavy protonic nuclei act as a sort of backbone for the light electron cloud.

It's actually less complicated than the weird twisted interactions found in hanging spells, in some ways?  There's a lot fewer interactions, really?  It's just that these are different interactions, and the math is a tad deeper than any individual force described in second-circle wizard textbooks.

Also they can't just manually manipulate the forces, they've got to subtly influence them with Prestidigitation to make bulk chemical interactions go differently.

Also also nobody's ever done anything like this before, so far as Keltham knows.  So they're gonna have to try a lot of stuff, and it's not actually clear which level of understanding is gonna be required to do what.

After lunch it'll be time for more experimentation using various things Keltham requested, using cheap materials he could identify, that will chemically react in ways that Keltham knows about!

Can they, for example, alter various substances, so that, when plunged into a hot fire, they burn with a different color of flame?  Not alter the flame's color directly, Prestidigitate the material so that it burns with a different color when lit?  That's a fairly direct test of their ability to mess with orbitals and potentials; it's electrons moving between orbitals that emit light of a particular energy and hence color.

Are they ready to get a lot of identical NO answers to 'Did that work?' while carefully observing for signs that anything observable went even slightly differently?