Alchemy
From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alchemy is a study of elements with the purpose of changing lead into gold. It is like chemistry, but much older. People who studied alchemy were called alchemists.
Alchemists in the Middle Ages often tried to make gold using things that were not gold, and they also tried to make the elixir of life. Many times alchemists would use stories and legends to try and figure out how to make gold. The psychologist Carl Gustav Jung was interested in this as well.
Alchemy is not a science any more. Some things that the alchemists learned about were important for other sciences, like chemistry.
In 1980, an American scientist named Glenn Seaborg actually changed a very tiny amount of lead into gold with a nuclear reactor. But it cost much more to transform the energy to do this than the tiny amount of gold was worth.
