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CellBioGuy comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89 - Less Wrong
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My guess: Oodles of carbon monoxide. Not good.
EDIT Gah, I can't believe I got this wrong what with all the yeast metabolism I've been working with lately. All the oxygen you consume goes into making water, the CO2 you breathe out comes entirely from a combination of whatever carbon source you are burning and a little tiny bit of your water, with your mitochondria ripping electrons from the latter and adding it to the former. So somehow the water would wind up with carbon in it... CH2O? Formaldehyde? And that's not even considering what'll happen to all the molecules that have had OH groups tacked on taken from water over the intervening time period...
I was going to suggest monatomic carbon in solution...
Oh dear gods, a quadruple radical with empty orbitals... that's even worse.
A better thing than sulfuric acid to transmute your enemy's head into?
It'll release about 28 kilocalories per GRAM as it reacts with itself for one (and probably boil anything it is right next to if you made a solid chunk of it rather than have it wind up dissolved in solution), but the more interesting bit is when it touches something else or winds up in solution and goes around doing the same sort of reactions that hydrogen peroxide does. Except instead of producing small oxidized molecules from whatever big molecules it reacts with, it would produce all kinds of crosslinked gunk instead.
Wow this got off topic.
edited for a math error
So, not a better thing, for the same reason that hydrofluoric acid probably isn't better.
If I ever learn partial transmutation, I want to know exactly what kinds of things to transmute trolls, good-aligned wizards, rival dark wizards, and the physical portions of dementors (if they have any?) into. My very first thought was either something with a very low melting point (Solid hydrogen?) or as reactive as possible (off the top of my head: Hydrazine). Then I considered what would happen after the transfiguration wore off in cases where my opponent sublimated or aerosolized while within wand distance.
My current best-guess for weaponized transmutation is the old standby: stone. But not granite- talc.