Read on Twitter
Now that I've defended my thesis, I feel confident in discussing some chemistry that's been on my mind -- namely, what the heck is going on, chemically speaking, in My Hero Academia, specifically with Momo Yaoyorozu? (1/?)
In my humble opinion, Momo is the closest thing the series has to a chemist -- her quirk, Creation, allows her to synthesize any object out of her fat cells, provided she understands the chemical structure of what she's making -- so we see here reading up on materials! (2/?)
That's all fine and good but you'd think she would be limited by elements that are abundant in the human body. We're mostly Oxygen, Carbon, and Nitrogen, so I assume Momo also is. (3/?)
Despite this, we see her produce large metal objects on the regular. My best guess is that most of these are iron based but still, we only have about 4 grams of iron and even then -- is she destroying all her hemoglobin to do this? (4/?)
We also specifically see her reference, explain, and produce a large quantity of fabric laced with nitinol - a nickel titanium alloy. According to Wikipedia, we can expect she has maybe 0.02 g of titanium in her body...at all. Where is this coming from? (5/?)
I can't square this circle -- Momo's body just shouldn't have the elements she's using to make all these objects. We see her make night vision goggles - what is even in those?! And this problem leads me to the following hypotheses (6/?)
1. Momo has an unusually metal enriched diet that she has been curating for this express purpose. I don't actually think this is the most likely. Like, what is this shield even made of? Could she eat enough metal for it? (7/?)
2. More likely - Momo's power is understated and she is actually performing nuclear chemistry within her body to obtain these heavier elements, making her absurdly, secretly overpowered. Personally, I love this take -- a secret nuclear quirk. (8/?)
3. Most likely - I was never meant to think about this hard but I'm sorry, the source material specifically says she uses her fat cells to transform into tools, so I can't stop thinking about this! Where are the elements coming from! Inquiring minds (me) want to know. (9/9)
