These flashbacks to his dad always make me tear up. As Senku finds more and more pieces of platinum in the gold dust we get to see how his dad spent his whole life gathering them.
I'd never heard of a silent bomb, but that's a pretty novel idea, whoever came up with it. That the reaction of plaster forming as it expands would be strong enough to break concrete.
As for the nitric acid machine, I feel they skipped over a little too much in how he even made that machine. Unless he already had it prepared in his kit and was just waiting for the platinum to slot in. But also how did he make that platinum coil? It has a melting point of 1772°C, so that can't possibly be fused together with the tools he had.
Still, I'm pretty excited to see the gang get back together for the 2nd cour and take down this villain.
But also how did he make that platinum coil? It has a melting point of 1772°C, so that can't possibly be fused together with the tools he had.
If you have the pure metals, then you can join pieces by getting them hot. In the case of platinum, it's highly ductile so you can cold work the pieces together. For the purposes of a catalyst, you don't even need to join them together; the key is to expose as much surface area as possible. It would actually better to shave it into smaller pieces. However, the Ostwald process reacts gaseous ammonia at a specific temperature so it makes sense that the platinum is suspended as a coil; to allow even air flow and to only catalyze the reaction with the gaseous form.
The documentation calls for 10% rhodium, but that is apparently to prevent the degradation of the catalyst.
It was a good episode to round out the prep phase of the current conflict. Plenty of potential for the next cour to bring lots of action and interesting tactics. I'm glad we don't have to wait too long. 🙂
And yeah, the Byakuya parts were very moving, if maybe a bit heavy-handed. Though I appreciate the show is sticking to what it knows best by keeping the characters relatively simple.
(Btw: upvoting and commenting from Mastodon. I wanna see how well this works.)