"What's happened?" Elie and Conrad were watching Valerie completely shocked at the train station.
They came straight from the Noble race, while Valerie and K.O. from the border of the Iridium-Platinum Kingdoms, from the jewelry store. Let's say there was something to look at Valerie, and the sight of her was shocking, because she had a white bandage around her head, and it was pretty spectacular. Plus, the white bandage on her two ears bulged, and her eyes gleamed, her face red with the heat rise in her body.
"We bought the earrings." K.O. stated simply, and Elie almost killed him for this statement. The earrings were okay, but why was there a bandage on the kid's head? "She tended a little to have her earlobes pierced."
"They said it wouldn't hurt!" Valerie complained. "It was a lie."
"Don't worry, her ears have been disinfected, we even got a bottle of disinfectant to further treat her pierced earlobes." K.O. comforted Elie, who knelt anxiously to Valerie.
"These two bumps are pretty worrying!" She complained.
"Those are cooler bags. Fortunately she chose a very hypoallergenic alloy for her earrings, so she won't feel any inconvenience for tomorrow. That's what the shop assistants said."
K.O. didn't tell to Elie, that Valerie was crying a lot, because she was feeling big pain after the piercing. She denied the pain in the shop, but her tears were flowing continuously, that's why the shop owner gave her the cooling gel bags. It looked like she was seriously injured, but somehow they had to secure the gel bags on Valerie's ears. The girl asked K.O., not to tell the others, that she was crying, because she wanted to keep her pride. The situation was aggravated by the fact that Valerie began to fever. Not because of her ears, just because the sudden pain hurt her. So K.O. kept this information to himself. Valerie hid in Elie's arms for a little consolation. The woman was caressing her back, to comfort her a bit, while listening to K.O.'s explanation.
"I think we'd better go down to the beach and erect the tent." K.O. supposed. "Do you want me to carry you on my back?" He asked the girl.
Valerie shook her head.
"I could walk." She refused the offer.
The beach was not far from the train station. Conrad erected the tent, and Elie persuaded Valerie to change into a swimsuit and sit into the sea's shallow part.
"How many fusions did we have in the Noble Race?" She asked curiously, when she more or less calmed down.
"Only four and a half." Conrad answered in a bad mood. He expected more.
The adults looked at each other, and smiled on him. The Noble Race has always been a risky venture, and those four and a half fusions were still a nice result.
"We made three from ours, and three with the temple's molecules." He sighed.
"More than nothing." Valerie said. She was happy, because she spent a lot for the earrings, and getting a plus pocket money was a very good news for her.
"May we see your earrings?" Elie asked Valerie, and she sat beside her into the sea.
"Do not remove the cooling gel bags yet." She replied.
"Did it really hurt?" Elie asked seriously.
"Certainly, because she really didn't want to let them the second earring to shoot into her ears anymore." K.O. said.
"Fortunately, K.O. was with me, and he convinced me, that it would be more beautiful in pairs."
"But you didn't bite the sellers, did you?" Elie asked half funny, recalling Valerie's tooth marks on her uncle's arm.
"No, but they asked K.O. to hold me, before they shoot the second one."
"You are really lucky that K.O. was with you and not me." Elie said seriously. She would not have been able to catch a protesting child. "Actually, why did you choose this alloy?" She was curious about Valerie's reasons.
"Because we were at the border of Kingdoms of Iridium and Platinum, so I wanted to put both of them into my earrings. They said, it is not common to use this alloy for jewelries, but they had, so I bought it."
"Wasn't it a bit expensive?" Elie asked nervously, because she was aware, that Valerie's choice was a very special alloy.
"It was." The girl nodded. "K.O. had to open the deposit on my hand device, and he said, that I can't have pocket money for a while, so I have to earn money, if I would want to buy something. But it is not too big problem, because we have made four and a half fusions, so if I put back the sum, I paid from the deposit, I still have some remaining money. I know, that I can't spend much, but I still have some spending money left."
Elie bowed to Valerie virtually. The girl was clever, as the Priestess of the Hydrogen Temple said so. She was risking a little bit, but it's come to her so far.
"So now you have Iridium in one ear and Platinum in the other?" Conrad asked, a bit confused.
"No, the jeweler melted the two metal, and made an alloy from them." K.O. replied.
"What is that alloy?" He asked curiously. "Does it connected to corrosion?"
"I always forget, that you failed in chemistry!" K.O. sighed.
"Pardon?" Elie asked. "What do you mean you failed in chemistry?"
Her question made the other three remained suspiciously silent. None of them even told Elie they had failed the exam.
"We both failed in chemistry at school." Conrad confessed with great difficulty.
"We have to take a supplementary exam, before the school starts in September." Valerie added.
Elie tried to make a surprised face, though she already knew this from Gus Noble, but she had been waiting a long time for the twins to tell her this information.
"However, you have done quite well so far without any knowledge of chemistry." She said finally.
"We would have done a lot thing differently if we had paid more attention at school." Conrad confessed, and Valerie agreed.
"We would have studied a lot of useful things, if we had taken studying seriously."
"Well, then there's nothing left. Don't cry over the spilled milk. Although it would be good if you both could pass that supplementary exam! Did you bring your textbooks?"
The twins nodded.
"Okay, we will talk about the supplementary exam tomorrow. So alloys. There are two types of them." Elie sighed and stopped. She suddenly didn't know how to explain the alloys without knowing what the twins could understood. She was also unsure if Conrad understood what she had explained to him about corrosion the day before. She looked at K.O. for help.
"Alloys are metals, but they are composed from at least two elements. One of them is always a metal, the other could be anything else." K.O. said.
"Elie mentioned bronze yesterday." Conrad began. "It is an alloy from copper and tin. But how does it look like?"
"Imagine them, like the lithium-hydride, but they are both metals." Elie continued, because she remembered, as the twins were making lithium-hydride for their battery. "The copper atoms are divided by tin atoms. Since both of them are metals, they share their free hands, and they are looking like one metal."
"To prevent corrosion." Conrad checked the information, he got from Elie.
"It is one of the reasons, the alloys are made. The other reason, that create materials with new properties. For example the copper will be blueish green from corrosion, but the bronze doesn't."
"The iron corrodes easily, but the alloy of iron, and other elements don't."
"And what is the other type of alloy?" Valerie asked.
"Bronze is a substitution alloy, because the copper and tin could swap each other's place. The other is called interstitial alloy. In this case the metal atoms are so big, that smaller atoms, or molecules could fit into the holes between the big atoms." K.O. said, but the twins were staring at him with blank eyes.
"Do you remember the Francium atoms?" Elie asked.
Valerie and Conrad both nodded.
"They were so big, weren't they?"
The twins nodded again.
"Imagine, that you could build a lattice from them, like with the Lithium atoms. They would have a lot of free space between them, where a Hydrogen molecule could dancing."
The twins still didn't understand, so Elie draw big circles to the sand, and Hydrogen molecules to the triangle-like empty spaces between the big circles.
"It is okay, now!" Conrad smiled. "But is it useful for something? Hydrogens can run out of metal atoms smoothly!"
The adults were laughing a bit.
"Yes, they could, and they are doing it anyway. That is exactly what they were using for." Elie said. "If someone wants to guide Hydrogens to reactions, they use Platinum to make an alloy with Hydrogen. It is less dangerous, than treating with Hydrogens in gas form."
"It is difficult." Valerie stated.
"I think it is difficult now, but when you learn more about Chemistry, than it will be easy to understand."
"The other typical interstitial alloy is the steel, it is roughly the alloy of iron and carbon. It is used to make knives, buildings, or machines. Like caravans."