Can somebody plz tell me what an Alchemist is?

[CardCaptorMoody]

Originally Posted by +BakuretsuNavi

or .. it can be used to create fire and such (dbz i guess).

Mustang wasn't 'creating' fire (in a sence he was... but you know what I am trying to say)... he was just increasing the oxygen concentration in areas that he wanted and with a snap of a finger ignited the oxygen (which is very flamable).

[Rheinhard]

Originally Posted by CardCaptorMoody

... he was just increasing the oxygen concentration in areas that he wanted and with a snap of a finger ignited the oxygen (which is very flamable).

Actually, Oxygen isn't flammable at all, but since chemical burning requires oxygen, the presence of large amounts of oxygen will multiply the rapidity with which a flame burns. A matchstick struck in air will make a small flame, but the same matchstick struck in oxygen will nearly explode because it burns so much more quickly. This was the reason for the Apollo 1 tragedy - a small spark ignited velcro strips inside the capsule where Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were training. Velcro doesn't really burn in air, but in the presence of pure oxygen, such as was the atmospheric composition in the capsule, it can turn into a fireball when ignited.

As for alchemy, it was the medieval study of nature with strong elements of mysticism thrown in. A lot of the ideas mentioned in FMA, like the Philosopher's Stone, and the transmutation of base metal to gold, were objectives of alchemical study. But most of it was really bunk because the medieaval alchemists had no serious concept of what we now call the scientific method (forming a hypothesis, performing an experiment to test it, and refining the results to prove or disprove it).

The method used in most alchemy would probably be along the lines of "I think if I mix 10 drams of bituminous limestone with an distillation of mercury I can make gold! ... Hmm, that didn't work. What about sulfur and natron? Crap that didn't work either..." So basically the alchemist never got anywhere with the gold-making, but as a side effect of all their dorking around, eventually learned about properties of various chemicals as a side effect. So the practice of alchemy laid the basis for the modern science of chemistry. But to say that alchemy=chemistry is just wrong. And it certainly isn't physics-- alchemy had no concept of the atomic structure of matter and so on.