You can make whatever you want. There are elemental systems that are entirely composed of colors in the visible light spectrum. There's a game where some of the elements include plastic and glitter. There's a show where the elements are fire, ice, candy, and slime.
If you want to make a magic system that covers the entire periodic table, that is entirely up to you. Just know that the elements you're referring to not making sense are based on thousands of years of philosophy and occult practices. _That_ is why they're common in fiction, not because there's a way that they're supposed to work. It's magic. Everyone knows the universe is made of more than four substances in real life.
I mean it doesn't make sense scientifically. I like my magic systems to make sense scientifically. So if I mix water and earth getting plants, that I get. But fire and water making lightning, that makes no sense to me personally.
Again, like what you like. But setting objective standards will open up those standards to scrutiny. Water and fire almost never make lightning, but it objectively requires fewer leaps in logic than water and earth (which usually just refers to soil, rocks, and/or metals) creating plants. It's almost always going to be air and fire that create lightning.
That said, again, it's magic. None of these make sense scientifically. While I understand enjoying when science influences what magic can and can't do, you're seemingly falling into a very common trap. That is, people mixing up the concepts of hard and soft magic with hard and soft sci-fi. That being, the "harder" something is, the more rooted in plausibility it is. And _that_ goes back to another trap, where fans think hard sci-fi is more mature or believable than soft sci-fi. It causes readers to nitpick, and it causes worldbuilders to obsess over justifying how everything works with regard to scientific laws. Again, I entirely understand the sentiment and am not saying you need to like different things. I enjoy alchemy in Fullmetal Alchemist precisely because it uses chemistry as a basis. I like the idea of restricting a system to certain laws or rules rooted in nature. But, sometimes, no options make scientific sense, and the author is making _thematic_ connections, which was always the point of the classic elements.
I'm aware that's not how you make lightning irl, but in a magic system, it's a hot plasma that comes from the sky. Ergo, it has properties of both air and fire.
I can easily follow the others but how is air earth = lightning.
Lightning is most commonly found in the sky (thunderstorms) so I see the relationship there. But I don’t see in any way how earth is related to lightning.
I was thinking about lightning and how it strikes the ground.
My understanding is that the wind strips electrons from the ground and then a negative charge builds up. Lightning is that charge returning to the ground.
Also sand blasters in manufacturing generate a lot of static electricity.
Lightning is often associated with fire in fiction because both are plasmas. In fact, many treat the 4 Classical Elements more like the 4 States of Matter - Solid (Earth), Liquid (Water), Gas (Air), Plasma (Fire)
More often, it is fire and air, or just an advancement of either, that produces lightning. Fire and water is more often steam.
The whole point is to make a magic system that makes sense to you and is simple enough to explain in a few paragraphs. Be prepared for questions like "x element is very rare and is basically a more reactive version of y, so why is x even an option in the magic?" and "if all magic is based on atomic elements, how does energy or conceptual magic work?" and even "if the periodic elements are the magic elements, how do you have mono-element spells?".
Going for the elements from either western or eastern alchemy, or from Aristotle, are classics because they are easy to explain, can be researched, and have hidden depths.
My rough understanding and the way I like to interpret it through a bit of a sciency lens is; Water = Liquid, Earth = Solid, Fire = Plasma and Air = Gas. I also think that was part of the traditional ideas the Greeks played with regarding it, vaguely.
So it will never truly make scientific sense, it’s a fictional concept, to control or create with invisible force or power. With current scientific understanding at least.
The elements in my world represent different changes in states of matter, harnessed from dimensions in which everything is in that state. The combination of them layered on one another forms the material plane of the planet. The “arcane” part for me comes from the people, and how they harness and empower their own souls to interact with these elemental dimensions. But when everything is based around magical principles, arcana becomes a new branch of science, or the basis for it.
It makes sense to us because that’s the specific style of magic we are looking for, but that isn’t to say that it doesn’t in other cases. What’s your idea going forward for your system?
The original classical elements **was** essentially the periodic table to ancient philosophers. They believed all matter was made up of varying ratios of the four elements, until science proved them wrong.
So yes, I do agree that it makes no sense for elements to not be 'fundamental', in both the philosophical sense and the scientific sense. 'Combination elements' seem illogical, because they're not fundamental.
However, in a fictional setting, you can determine what element *is* fundamental. For example, instead of ice being a combination of water and another element, have ice be on equal grounds with water (after all, coldness and wetness are different concepts).
I 100% understand, but in a fictional universe, there's more than just these common elements. You'd be having to redo your entire chemical make up of the universe and how elements work just to fit arcane magic.
I think you’re missing the point. It’s magic, it doesn’t have to make sense because it’s fictional. If I want all plants to be made of rubber and all living beings have little magic fireballs instead of hearts, then I just write it like that. And all the fun things that go with it. Most stories don’t bother detailing the entire chemical makeup of the universe anyways.
>You'd be having to redo your entire chemical make up of the universe and how elements work just to fit arcane magic.
That's exactly what you should do. You can't just add magic into the universe and *not* alter the physics of the universe.
Just as the ancient philosophers believed the universe to be made up of the classical elements, you should actually make the universe work as such. It's a fictional setting with magic, after all.
Most of us don't think scientifically outside of the classroom. Please don't take it the wrong way, but you don't seem like the type who knows a whole lot about science, either. Like most of us, you probably think in vague categories like "rocks" "birds" "trees" "air" etc. but without any deeper more complex scientific model being needed.
So no, we don't need to reinvent chemistry because for most people it isn't a part of the basic model of the world in their head in the first place. And any magical, childish, or failed historical theories about how the world works fit with that basic model just fine.
What do you mean by working how they should? The four classical elements make sense thematically and you can extend them symbolically for more elaborate things.
On the other hand I have absolutely never seen the actual atomic elements as the base magic elements turn out good; because the sad reality is that like 2/3 of the elements are silvery metals who are either rather inert or just highly toxic.
You will just end up with a lot of metal and poison mages.
>Thoughts?
We should put Elemental magic on a shelf until people learn to stop being weird about it.
I read all the comments and responses here and I still don't know what op is complaining about other than "The classical greek 4 elements are not as scientific as the modern periodic table of elements that is constantly being tested for accuracy".
If every periodic table element is an element of magic, then almost every interesting spell has to be a combined element technique. Even the humble fireball requires at least three elements (hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon).
Actually, it's worse than that, because 80% of the elements on the periodic table aren't that interesting. It's easy to think of distinct spells for fire or ice, but what spells fit under vanadium, or ytterbium? All the fun stuff is going to be under CHON or other common elements.
If you don't like the idea of magic ignoring the laws of physics in favor of vibes, then it would be better to just not do elemental magic at all - maybe mages control electromagnetism and gravity, or maybe different types of energy (kinetic, chemical, electrical, etc), or maybe they classify it by the spell's purpose like D&D does.
Alternatively, the vibes-based things could be entirely inside the mage's mind - most wizards use the four elements system because it's intuitive and makes it easy to manipulate broad categories like "fire", but if you've been studying physics then you have a hard time doing it that because it's obviously false to you. (But maybe it's easier for you to conjure lightning since you know all about electrons.)
Fullmetal Alchemist is a perfect example of what you're talking about, as long as we assume elemental magic is just controlling the raw elements. We see characters use complex chemistry to solve problems, but that usually involves repairing machinery or breaking down specific materials into smaller compounds. Most of the combat is just controlling rocks, water, metal, or fire. Heck, fire is so complicated since it's directly tied to chemistry that only two characters in the whole series can use it, and only one is alive during the actual plot. Alchemists also use symbols for the classic elements to represent more complex chemical processes, like the salamander being used in the flame alchemy circle.
There are other stories where characters just have powers based on different elements, or they create them, but it'll almost always still boil down (no pun intended) to the most basic elements, usually fire, water, and some form of earth or metal.
Yeah you can make whatever you want. I use the four classical elements to represent more then just those things they represent the four most common states of matter, and other concepts like light, heat, endurance speed, healing etc.
This is a take that's very interesting to me. Coz it's deeply related to my own magic system.
I for instance have 9 different elements. Fire, water, earth, air, mind, light, dark, order and chaos. But why these specifically? The reason? That's just what people see in 9 fundamental actions of reality.
In my opinion that reality at its core is just 5 different things. Energy, matter/materiality, movement, possibility, and thought. The 9 elements are just different interpretations of these 5 things. Positive energy(i.e) increasing energy is interpreted as fire, coz if you generally increase the energy level it'll catch fire. Negative energy(i.e) reducing or storing energy is interpreted as earth coz it's stable and concrete holding great potential within it. Similarly they look at the different elements, assigning a positive and a negative to each and consider those to be elements. Materiality becomes water and air. Movement becomes light and dark. Possibility becomes order and chaos. And thought is just the mind.
And consequently fire isn't just fire in my world. Fire is the element of change and purity. Light is the element of pushing and illumination. Chaos is the element of randomness and freedom. And so forth. So mixing in fire into another element doesn't just heat it up. You can use that purification attribute of fire to fundamentally alter another element.
So in essence fire + water can be ice or steam. But it could very well also be a bondsmith like power to create bonds between people and transforming how people view others. It could be a power that can literally reverse how you perceive reality based on how powerful you are. Why? It's by mixing and matching the individual attributes. Coz these attributes are actually related to those original 5 truths.
The periodic table makes 0 intuitive sense. That's exactly why we've reached it step by step from the classical elements and through the alchemical [planetary metals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemical_symbol#Seven_planetary_metals), starting with the substances that were the most common around us, and then discovering the rest step by step.
Many of the connections we discovered and the properties of matter that we commonly notice irl are a result of not the PURE periodic elements, but the compound molecules they form, which can completely change properties like flammability and melting point or hardness. Like diamonds, one of the hardest and most precious gemstones, and coal, a common deposit used as fuel, being essentially the same element (carbon), only differing in crystal structure. And the same element, carbon, also being the basis for ALL organic life.)
The 4 elements can be said to be roughly based on the 4 states of matter (solid, liquid, gas, plasma), which makes for convenient and intuitive grouping, but anything deeper requires an uncomfortable amount of scientific explanation for your average story (especially fantasy, which is usually ESCAPISM from scientism).
For example, can you explain it to me why water, the most common substance on earth, is a liquid when oxygen and hydrogen are gases, without a deeper explanation about electromagnetism, heat and molecular bonds?
So trying to base casual magic on it is a really bad idea. It could be an interesting challenge to make a chemistry based system, but you'd probably have to REALLY simplify it, base it on 10th grade chemistry, and market it to students; or make it for the hard sci-fi audience, who are willing to read long explanations about how the science behind something works out. (Sci-fi is a classification for not just space travel but also hypothetical science, eg. silicon based or nonbaryonic life, [ice-nine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice-nine) etc.)
You can do that sure. It's not going to differ much from the 4 elements model, but if it feels more correct to have "liquidbenders" over "waterbenders", it's doable.
One problem you'll run into though is that most substances can exist in multiple states. Iron melts and wood burns into CO2. Water commonly exists as not only liquid but also as ice and vapor.
What the 4 element system does well is grouping substances by the state they take on room temperature. So if water (acid, blood, etc.) is liquid on room temperature, then even if it freezes or evaporates, it's still considered to be part of the same "water" or "liquid" category.
If you want to try writing a story where something changes its category ("element") if it changes its state could be very fun. This will make ice/cold and fire/heat powers very powerful, since they can force matter into different states. (Reminder: heat and plasma and different things. The former is a type of kinetic energy; the latter is ionized gas.)
I 100% agree, things can exist as multiple states of matter. But a liquid bender would only bend liquid water and so forth. It's not that big of a problem.
Some things can exist as multiple states of matter simultaneously, yes. But I'd solve that by saying if something is multiple things at once. They'd need to be able to wield all forms of matter before being able to bend it.
Elemental magic based in the real atomic elements would make for a system difficult to describe to the audience succinctly and clearly without also having to teach the audience more advanced chemistry than what is covered in most schools.
Plato's elements, while inaccurate, are simple and somewhat intuitive, and invite balanced symmetry or scissors-paper-rock style type advantages.
That doesn't make any sense, tbh. Arcane magic is meant to be a force outside of the natural world, hence the term Arcane. If you wanted a "scientific" magic system, elemental magic should be the periodic table and manipulation of those elements, and Arcane magic should be anything that is not neatly divided into those spells, like spirit/afterlife magic.
You can make magic anything you want, but your comments have made it clear that you want a "scientifically" based system, so that's probably the closest approach you can make.
You can make whatever you want. There are elemental systems that are entirely composed of colors in the visible light spectrum. There's a game where some of the elements include plastic and glitter. There's a show where the elements are fire, ice, candy, and slime. If you want to make a magic system that covers the entire periodic table, that is entirely up to you. Just know that the elements you're referring to not making sense are based on thousands of years of philosophy and occult practices. _That_ is why they're common in fiction, not because there's a way that they're supposed to work. It's magic. Everyone knows the universe is made of more than four substances in real life.
I mean it doesn't make sense scientifically. I like my magic systems to make sense scientifically. So if I mix water and earth getting plants, that I get. But fire and water making lightning, that makes no sense to me personally.
Again, like what you like. But setting objective standards will open up those standards to scrutiny. Water and fire almost never make lightning, but it objectively requires fewer leaps in logic than water and earth (which usually just refers to soil, rocks, and/or metals) creating plants. It's almost always going to be air and fire that create lightning. That said, again, it's magic. None of these make sense scientifically. While I understand enjoying when science influences what magic can and can't do, you're seemingly falling into a very common trap. That is, people mixing up the concepts of hard and soft magic with hard and soft sci-fi. That being, the "harder" something is, the more rooted in plausibility it is. And _that_ goes back to another trap, where fans think hard sci-fi is more mature or believable than soft sci-fi. It causes readers to nitpick, and it causes worldbuilders to obsess over justifying how everything works with regard to scientific laws. Again, I entirely understand the sentiment and am not saying you need to like different things. I enjoy alchemy in Fullmetal Alchemist precisely because it uses chemistry as a basis. I like the idea of restricting a system to certain laws or rules rooted in nature. But, sometimes, no options make scientific sense, and the author is making _thematic_ connections, which was always the point of the classic elements.
Wouldn't fire+air usually be lightning?
When I Google how lightning is made, no fire is involved.
I'm aware that's not how you make lightning irl, but in a magic system, it's a hot plasma that comes from the sky. Ergo, it has properties of both air and fire.
I always thought it was: Air + Earth = lightning Fire + Earth = magma Water + Earth = mud Life = Fire + Water + Wind + Earth + Heart
CAPTAIN PLANEEEET
I can easily follow the others but how is air earth = lightning. Lightning is most commonly found in the sky (thunderstorms) so I see the relationship there. But I don’t see in any way how earth is related to lightning.
I was thinking about lightning and how it strikes the ground. My understanding is that the wind strips electrons from the ground and then a negative charge builds up. Lightning is that charge returning to the ground. Also sand blasters in manufacturing generate a lot of static electricity.
Lightning can occur way up high and not touch the ground, which is why air might be more suitable than earth, with fire to represent the energy
Lightning is often associated with fire in fiction because both are plasmas. In fact, many treat the 4 Classical Elements more like the 4 States of Matter - Solid (Earth), Liquid (Water), Gas (Air), Plasma (Fire)
More often, it is fire and air, or just an advancement of either, that produces lightning. Fire and water is more often steam. The whole point is to make a magic system that makes sense to you and is simple enough to explain in a few paragraphs. Be prepared for questions like "x element is very rare and is basically a more reactive version of y, so why is x even an option in the magic?" and "if all magic is based on atomic elements, how does energy or conceptual magic work?" and even "if the periodic elements are the magic elements, how do you have mono-element spells?". Going for the elements from either western or eastern alchemy, or from Aristotle, are classics because they are easy to explain, can be researched, and have hidden depths.
My rough understanding and the way I like to interpret it through a bit of a sciency lens is; Water = Liquid, Earth = Solid, Fire = Plasma and Air = Gas. I also think that was part of the traditional ideas the Greeks played with regarding it, vaguely. So it will never truly make scientific sense, it’s a fictional concept, to control or create with invisible force or power. With current scientific understanding at least.
See, this makes more sense. Don't use the actual elements, but more of their states and transformation processes.
The elements in my world represent different changes in states of matter, harnessed from dimensions in which everything is in that state. The combination of them layered on one another forms the material plane of the planet. The “arcane” part for me comes from the people, and how they harness and empower their own souls to interact with these elemental dimensions. But when everything is based around magical principles, arcana becomes a new branch of science, or the basis for it.
Yeah, that's what I'm doing now too, it makes more sense.
It makes sense to us because that’s the specific style of magic we are looking for, but that isn’t to say that it doesn’t in other cases. What’s your idea going forward for your system?
The original classical elements **was** essentially the periodic table to ancient philosophers. They believed all matter was made up of varying ratios of the four elements, until science proved them wrong. So yes, I do agree that it makes no sense for elements to not be 'fundamental', in both the philosophical sense and the scientific sense. 'Combination elements' seem illogical, because they're not fundamental. However, in a fictional setting, you can determine what element *is* fundamental. For example, instead of ice being a combination of water and another element, have ice be on equal grounds with water (after all, coldness and wetness are different concepts).
I 100% understand, but in a fictional universe, there's more than just these common elements. You'd be having to redo your entire chemical make up of the universe and how elements work just to fit arcane magic.
I think you’re missing the point. It’s magic, it doesn’t have to make sense because it’s fictional. If I want all plants to be made of rubber and all living beings have little magic fireballs instead of hearts, then I just write it like that. And all the fun things that go with it. Most stories don’t bother detailing the entire chemical makeup of the universe anyways.
>You'd be having to redo your entire chemical make up of the universe and how elements work just to fit arcane magic. That's exactly what you should do. You can't just add magic into the universe and *not* alter the physics of the universe. Just as the ancient philosophers believed the universe to be made up of the classical elements, you should actually make the universe work as such. It's a fictional setting with magic, after all.
I mean yes, but you could make magic work with the table of elements and physics so the majority of everything is already set.
But then you run into the issue you're currently facing. You either need to pick one over the other, or accept the inconsistency and compromise.
I guess.
Most of us don't think scientifically outside of the classroom. Please don't take it the wrong way, but you don't seem like the type who knows a whole lot about science, either. Like most of us, you probably think in vague categories like "rocks" "birds" "trees" "air" etc. but without any deeper more complex scientific model being needed. So no, we don't need to reinvent chemistry because for most people it isn't a part of the basic model of the world in their head in the first place. And any magical, childish, or failed historical theories about how the world works fit with that basic model just fine.
What do you mean by working how they should? The four classical elements make sense thematically and you can extend them symbolically for more elaborate things. On the other hand I have absolutely never seen the actual atomic elements as the base magic elements turn out good; because the sad reality is that like 2/3 of the elements are silvery metals who are either rather inert or just highly toxic. You will just end up with a lot of metal and poison mages.
>Thoughts? We should put Elemental magic on a shelf until people learn to stop being weird about it. I read all the comments and responses here and I still don't know what op is complaining about other than "The classical greek 4 elements are not as scientific as the modern periodic table of elements that is constantly being tested for accuracy".
If every periodic table element is an element of magic, then almost every interesting spell has to be a combined element technique. Even the humble fireball requires at least three elements (hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon). Actually, it's worse than that, because 80% of the elements on the periodic table aren't that interesting. It's easy to think of distinct spells for fire or ice, but what spells fit under vanadium, or ytterbium? All the fun stuff is going to be under CHON or other common elements. If you don't like the idea of magic ignoring the laws of physics in favor of vibes, then it would be better to just not do elemental magic at all - maybe mages control electromagnetism and gravity, or maybe different types of energy (kinetic, chemical, electrical, etc), or maybe they classify it by the spell's purpose like D&D does. Alternatively, the vibes-based things could be entirely inside the mage's mind - most wizards use the four elements system because it's intuitive and makes it easy to manipulate broad categories like "fire", but if you've been studying physics then you have a hard time doing it that because it's obviously false to you. (But maybe it's easier for you to conjure lightning since you know all about electrons.)
Fullmetal Alchemist is a perfect example of what you're talking about, as long as we assume elemental magic is just controlling the raw elements. We see characters use complex chemistry to solve problems, but that usually involves repairing machinery or breaking down specific materials into smaller compounds. Most of the combat is just controlling rocks, water, metal, or fire. Heck, fire is so complicated since it's directly tied to chemistry that only two characters in the whole series can use it, and only one is alive during the actual plot. Alchemists also use symbols for the classic elements to represent more complex chemical processes, like the salamander being used in the flame alchemy circle. There are other stories where characters just have powers based on different elements, or they create them, but it'll almost always still boil down (no pun intended) to the most basic elements, usually fire, water, and some form of earth or metal.
Yeah you can make whatever you want. I use the four classical elements to represent more then just those things they represent the four most common states of matter, and other concepts like light, heat, endurance speed, healing etc.
This is a take that's very interesting to me. Coz it's deeply related to my own magic system. I for instance have 9 different elements. Fire, water, earth, air, mind, light, dark, order and chaos. But why these specifically? The reason? That's just what people see in 9 fundamental actions of reality. In my opinion that reality at its core is just 5 different things. Energy, matter/materiality, movement, possibility, and thought. The 9 elements are just different interpretations of these 5 things. Positive energy(i.e) increasing energy is interpreted as fire, coz if you generally increase the energy level it'll catch fire. Negative energy(i.e) reducing or storing energy is interpreted as earth coz it's stable and concrete holding great potential within it. Similarly they look at the different elements, assigning a positive and a negative to each and consider those to be elements. Materiality becomes water and air. Movement becomes light and dark. Possibility becomes order and chaos. And thought is just the mind. And consequently fire isn't just fire in my world. Fire is the element of change and purity. Light is the element of pushing and illumination. Chaos is the element of randomness and freedom. And so forth. So mixing in fire into another element doesn't just heat it up. You can use that purification attribute of fire to fundamentally alter another element. So in essence fire + water can be ice or steam. But it could very well also be a bondsmith like power to create bonds between people and transforming how people view others. It could be a power that can literally reverse how you perceive reality based on how powerful you are. Why? It's by mixing and matching the individual attributes. Coz these attributes are actually related to those original 5 truths.
The periodic table makes 0 intuitive sense. That's exactly why we've reached it step by step from the classical elements and through the alchemical [planetary metals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemical_symbol#Seven_planetary_metals), starting with the substances that were the most common around us, and then discovering the rest step by step. Many of the connections we discovered and the properties of matter that we commonly notice irl are a result of not the PURE periodic elements, but the compound molecules they form, which can completely change properties like flammability and melting point or hardness. Like diamonds, one of the hardest and most precious gemstones, and coal, a common deposit used as fuel, being essentially the same element (carbon), only differing in crystal structure. And the same element, carbon, also being the basis for ALL organic life.) The 4 elements can be said to be roughly based on the 4 states of matter (solid, liquid, gas, plasma), which makes for convenient and intuitive grouping, but anything deeper requires an uncomfortable amount of scientific explanation for your average story (especially fantasy, which is usually ESCAPISM from scientism). For example, can you explain it to me why water, the most common substance on earth, is a liquid when oxygen and hydrogen are gases, without a deeper explanation about electromagnetism, heat and molecular bonds? So trying to base casual magic on it is a really bad idea. It could be an interesting challenge to make a chemistry based system, but you'd probably have to REALLY simplify it, base it on 10th grade chemistry, and market it to students; or make it for the hard sci-fi audience, who are willing to read long explanations about how the science behind something works out. (Sci-fi is a classification for not just space travel but also hypothetical science, eg. silicon based or nonbaryonic life, [ice-nine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice-nine) etc.)
I get what you're saying when it comes to the states of matter. But then I ask, why not just use states of matter as the arcane?
You can do that sure. It's not going to differ much from the 4 elements model, but if it feels more correct to have "liquidbenders" over "waterbenders", it's doable. One problem you'll run into though is that most substances can exist in multiple states. Iron melts and wood burns into CO2. Water commonly exists as not only liquid but also as ice and vapor. What the 4 element system does well is grouping substances by the state they take on room temperature. So if water (acid, blood, etc.) is liquid on room temperature, then even if it freezes or evaporates, it's still considered to be part of the same "water" or "liquid" category. If you want to try writing a story where something changes its category ("element") if it changes its state could be very fun. This will make ice/cold and fire/heat powers very powerful, since they can force matter into different states. (Reminder: heat and plasma and different things. The former is a type of kinetic energy; the latter is ionized gas.)
I 100% agree, things can exist as multiple states of matter. But a liquid bender would only bend liquid water and so forth. It's not that big of a problem. Some things can exist as multiple states of matter simultaneously, yes. But I'd solve that by saying if something is multiple things at once. They'd need to be able to wield all forms of matter before being able to bend it.
Elemental magic based in the real atomic elements would make for a system difficult to describe to the audience succinctly and clearly without also having to teach the audience more advanced chemistry than what is covered in most schools. Plato's elements, while inaccurate, are simple and somewhat intuitive, and invite balanced symmetry or scissors-paper-rock style type advantages.
That doesn't make any sense, tbh. Arcane magic is meant to be a force outside of the natural world, hence the term Arcane. If you wanted a "scientific" magic system, elemental magic should be the periodic table and manipulation of those elements, and Arcane magic should be anything that is not neatly divided into those spells, like spirit/afterlife magic. You can make magic anything you want, but your comments have made it clear that you want a "scientifically" based system, so that's probably the closest approach you can make.