Is it theoretically possible to create such device, which would make anything from air?
Question
I mean, it would somehow add or remove electrons from any atom and combine them, creating anything (cars, food, water etc.)
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General Physics
7 years
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Answer ( 1 )
It would require more than air to create anything that is composed of anything besides nitrogen, oxygen, or the other gases in air. Water, for example, could be made from air alone, but sulfuric acid or metal materials can’t be made from air alone, because air lacks the specific elements needed to form each chemical compound. The problem with removing and adding atoms, is that ions rather than pure element compounds would be formed, making them unstable, and even problematic for two reasons:
1. The material created wouldn’t be the same as what the material desired is naturally. Make an ion, just change one superscript or subscript of a chemical, just even swapping a proton and neutron or two would change the entire material. If you want carbon, you might get an ion of carbon, but it would behave entirely different from real carbon, and therefore be useless as a carbon copy (pun intended).
2. If the material isn’t pure, then it would be of different economic value than the pure form.
Source(s): Memory of 7th Grade Science class (my answer might not be entirely accurate because of that, the information I learned wasn’t recent)