Grog vs. Pewter: The Chemistry Behind Monkey Island's Mug-Melting Mystery
The science of Monkey Island: can grog dissolve a metal mug that fast?
A University of Groningen chemist treats the iconic Monkey Island grog puzzle as an inverse corrosion problem. Using a 35-second mug lifetime and a 2 mm pewter wall, he calculates the proton flux needed to dissolve tin that fast. The result demands an impossibly aggressive acid, revealing that the game's grog is far more corrosive than any real-world mixture.
The most interesting property of grog from a chemical perspective is not its composition, however, but its remarkable corrosivity.
- buildsjets
If the grog contained enough mercury, it would dissolve the pewter mug. Mercury also eats thru solid aluminum pretty quickly.
- shermantanktop
There should be a name for this phenomenon: geeking out about an overly literal interpretation of how a technical topic is presented, made by an artist/creator a long time ago who likely didn't intend to satisfy such a literal understanding.
It's like retconning... retgeeking?
- herodoturtle
> we use the apparent rate of mug deterioration to estimate the proton supply required by a simplified corrosion model
Damn I love HN.
- Lucasoato
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, what color is the tree?
- KellyCriterion
In MI1, the only annoying part was that "wood forest path" thingy in the beginning (when being in the village), and later on the world wasnt pretty anymore when being on Le Chucks Island