Aviendha Knows About Elements?

[broecklein]

Quote

Her entire identity had been wrapped up in those spears, her self forged into their steel as surely as the carbon that strengthened them.

 

How does Aviendha know what carbon is? Let alone that this is the element (a gas at room temperature) that strengthens Steel.

 

Is this a slip by Jordan/Sanderson? Was this knowledge gained by the rings? Or is this a glimpse into the SciFi facets of WOT?

 

I just finished relistening to the audio books trying to note any times I heard another element mentioned and could not find any. Thoughts?

[DojoToad]

Carbon is solid in the form of charcoal which blacksmiths have known about for hundreds of years if not longer with no formal chemistry training. 

[broecklein]

Carbon was named in 1789, I do not think blacksmiths knew it was carbon they were using.

[Elder_Haman]

I think Sanderson used "carbon" as a less wordy alternative to "the black stuff that we mix in with iron in order to create steel". It's descriptive, not literal.

[Thrasymachus]

The book is written for us in English, where "carbon" has not just a technical meaning, but also a common one, as a psuedonym for charcoal, coal and soot (as it's common knowledge now that all those things are predominantly composed of carbon).  But the characters in the book don't speak or think in English, they speak Common, a derived and simplified form of the Old Tongue.  Whatever the actual word Aviendha's thinking of there, it certainly isn't "carbon" in the technical, scientific sense, though it may be derived from a word in the Old Tongue that did have that sense.  Rather, it's a word most easily understood by English readers to be "carbon" in the common sense of that word.  One could probably substitute "charcoal" where Aviendha thinks "carbon" and retain the sense that Aviendha intends, but better for English readers to simply say "carbon" because of what they understand.