system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Hello, I have a weird and possibly dumb question. We know fruits and vegetables have trace metals in them. So I was wondering, is it possible (though not necessarily practical) to extract the metals from the fruits and vegetables?
gpt
Depends which metals you want to get. Metallurgy isn't going to work, after all - concentrations are way too low. But you could get it to happen chemically. In an ideal situation, the metal you want would be present in the fruit as a compound that's one simple reaction away from becoming a solid crystal at room temperature. Blend your fruit to smithereens, dilute it well in water, and cause that one simple reaction.  There's your metal. Or, more likely, a metal salt. But still. Something that could be purified through more conventional processes.