Unobtainium Why?

[Raiha]

i saw half of the movie tonight and walked out. good to know they never explained why the fuck humans were on that planet in the first place. i guess its because they needed an excuse to tell the stock holders while they looked at all the pretty colors.

 

[kmiik]

according to wikipedia,
"unobtainium is a concept for any extremely rare, costly, or physically impossible material needed to fulfill a given design for a given application. The properties of any particular unobtainium depend on the intended use. For example, a pulley made of unobtainium might be massless and frictionless. However, if used in a nuclear rocket, unobtainium would be light, strong at high temperatures, and resistant to radiation damage."

so, it seems like Unobtainium is so valuable because it can be ANYTHING you need it to be. It's the Ditto of metals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unobtanium

EDIT: Raiha, you seem to have missed the topic of this thread. Humans were on that planet to mine Unobtainium.

 

[Revolutionary]

I think that its an exaggerated version (metaphor) of oil.

 

[chowderface]

Unobtanium is actually dignity given crystalline form, which should tell you why the megacorps are so desperate to get it.

That's right. The humans are actually a subtle metaphor for us.

 

[Booze Zombie]

Unobtanium makes the impossible possible and can only be bought from the Acme Corporation.

It does sound like something from a Warner Bros cartoon, doesn't it?

 

[Raiha]

yes i know they were on the planet to mine unobtainium. that guy from boiler room said so. however in the first half of the movie that was the one and only mention of this super rare and expensive ugly gray rock that apparently people want just so they can say "ooh look at me i have a super rare and expensive ugly gray rock". i don't think i am being too demanding for the movie to give a reason that humans want this element. i'm not asking for its place on the periodic table, but something more than "they have that, i want it" would be nice.

 

[DoW Lowen]

I don't think you were really meant to know. It's just a name for a rare mineral or resource found in native lands. It could have easily been replaced with oil, plutonium, gold, snicker bars and it wouldn't have affected the plot for even a millisecond.

Don't worry your pretty little heads over it.

 

[Soushi]

i guess the unobtanium would have been why Hometree grew so large too... with it being on a large deposit and all. Particulate would get i nto teh roots, be absorbed into the tree and... viola!
I guess a rock with flaoty powers would be worth 20,000,000 a kilo.

 

[Anticitizen_Two]

The fact that James Cameron named a hard to obtain substance "unobtainium" proves to me that he suffered serious head trauma as a child. Really subtle there, Jimmy.

 

[Scythax]

It's one of the ingredients in vegemite.

 

[Hollock]

If you've seen Avatar you know that the corporation was their to mine for a shiny substance, unobtanium. The thing is that it is never explained (in the movie) why this shiny metal is so damn valuable. So I ask you, what do you think unobtanium does to make it so valuable? I personally think it's a cure to some form of disease, or maybe cancer.

Edit: Unobtanium is worth 20 million dollars a kilogram.

Unobtainium is a term used by aerospace engineers (like myself, a freshman in aerospace engineering) to describe a substance that doesn't exist, is expensive or is not available in high enough quantities, but at the same time is needed for a new design.

In the movie Avatar, unobtainium is a naturally-occuring room temerature super conductor. The properties of said object would be 1) the ability to transfer electric current with 100% effieciency (as opposed to current high-voltage wires which have ~50% effieciency over long distances.) and 2) levitation in a magnetic field. Which is why you see the floating islands, and the floating rock in Selfrige's office.

in short, Unobtainium is a room temperature superconductor. If that existed 20 million per kilo would actually be kinda cheap.

Give this guy a prize, he's correct. Still keep posting what you thought it was for. By the way your prize is an invisable cookie, enjoy.

fuck invisible cookie here's a real cookie

Spoiler

Go ahead, take it

Yeah I was pretty much going to guess that it was what made the mountains levitate.

 

[iamthehorde]

unobtainium is possibly the dumbest name for a fake mineral ever. un-obtain-ium! rather sounds like something out of earth defence force 2017.

we should call gold super-shiny-um from now on. it´s a sick name.