#cassandrium

[disneyfanatic1993]

🩷Baby Opal🩷

I realized I hadn’t really drawn baby Opal since the comic of her birth, so here she is! 🥰

[polymathart]

What if Cassandrium is just a purple D&D dice

[dg-darkfantasy]

Scarf Sharing

[squirrilous]

Wow, another nice bit of foreshadowing for Moon Cassandra here. Way back in Great Expotations in Season 1!

Well... excusing the fact that compressing sand makes glass, not a new element. Also the weirdness of Varian seeing a bunch of huge spiky death rocks and thinking “wow these remind me of Cassandra...” :\

[sonicgetsrawed]

My take on the Cassandrium necklace! It was nice to get back into making jewelry!

[omni-scient-pan-da]

Boy names a whole ass element after you you and yet you still decide to dangle him out a window to use him as bait? SMH 😔😔😔

[charismaquark]

Cassandrium: an alchemical analysis

One of the questions I've always had about "Great Expotations" is, what exactly is Cassandrium? Varian describes it as "a new element", and I like to think he knows what he's talking about. Especially since Cassandrium is the only substance he describes this way- his earlier creation, Flynnoleum, is not an element but a 'compound'. (This is an important distinction in chemistry: the difference being that an element is made up of singular atoms, like you would find on the periodic table, whereas compounds are made up of multiple types of atoms bonded together in molecules. And this fits perfectly with the way that Flynnoleum apparently powers Varian's reactors through energy-releasing 'chemical reactions'!)

So, could Cassandrium be a real element that we could find on the periodic table? In this post I will present three theories, from least to most plausible, on its true alchemical nature.

THEORY #1: CASSANDRIUM IS AN UNDISCOVERED SUPERHEAVY ELEMENT

We’ve already discovered all the elements with atomic numbers from 1 to 118, and none of them have properties that exactly match Cassandrium. So what if it’s a REALLY new element with an even higher number? Once you get past uranium (element 92), all the elements we’ve found are highly unstable and will break down within a few seconds. However, scientists have theorized that some undiscovered elements might be part of an ‘island of stability’, where they have just the right nuclear configuration to be stable for a much longer time. And since we haven’t created any of these hypothetical elements yet... who knows, maybe one of them could look like Cassandrium.

This theory would also imply that Varian has somehow engineered a nuclear fusion reactor, which is pretty impressive but probably gave most of Corona radiation poisoning. Oops.

THEORY #2: CASSANDRIUM IS IODINE

Most elements that we know of are metals, but there is exactly one which is a purplish crystal at room temperature: iodine. Tangled is set in the 1780s (according to an interview with the creators), and iodine was discovered in 1811- so it’s very believable that no one in the setting would ever have seen it before.

However, iodine is also a toxic skin irritant, so... probably not a good idea to put it on a necklace.

THEORY #3: CASSANDRIUM IS A TRANSITION METAL

This is the most fun and believable theory in my opinion, but it relies on Varian having dramatized his explanation a little bit. Perhaps the pretty crystal (which we might call ‘Cassandrite’) is actually a glassy mineral similar to amethyst: silica quartz colored purple by trace impurities of a transition metal. (Transition metals are the elements in the center section of the periodic table.) This works with how Varian describes the workings of his ‘Elemental Remogrifier’:

In other words, the machine melts the sand (which is made of silica and trace deposits of other substances!) and then uses the pressure created by the rotational force to force it to solidify. (Slightly irrelevant side note: as a physics student I appreciate how Varian talks about counter-centrifugal force, i.e. what we would call centripetal force. Despite common misconception, centrifugal force does not technically exist!)

A pure silica crystal would be colorless, but Cassandrite is purple- which is presumably how Varian was able to realize that there was some kind of metal inside the mineral he created. That metal is the element which he names Cassandrium! This again fits with the scientific timeline, since many transition metals were not discovered until the 1800s.

Here’s where this concept gets really fun: transition metals can be mixed into steel to form new alloys which can be even stronger than regular steel. So if Cassandrium is actually a metal, and one day Varian discovers its applications in metallurgy...

The Cassandrite necklace was cute. But just imagine how impressive it would be to create a sword forged from Cassandrian steel.

[cxbin-pxrsephone]

SPOILERS FOR TANGLED THE SERIES FINALE

I wanna cryyyy. It’s been such a journey and I’m just so emotional rn. This is such a beautiful show and I’m really satisfied with the ending. I’m so happy to be a part of this fandom and I love you all so much. So here’s one last hurrah for the TTS fandom!!! 🌻

(And did I mainly take photos of Cass. Yes yes I did I love her. Also she kept Cassandrium! Idk why I’m so happy about that I just am)