Chemically Damaged and Conveniently Imaginary

Okay, I hate to be writing about the same subject in less than two weeks, but Trump says vandals chemically damaged the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Well, I did a little research, and I asked some friends of mine who are deep into the chemical world, very deep, what magical chemical could both induce algae growth and peel the newly painted surface off in chunks.

The closest answer was trisodium phosphate: TSP, Na₃PO₄. It contains phosphate, which can feed algae, and, in concentrated form, it has been used in paint preparation.

So I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations to figure out how much of this magical chemical you might need to create that kind of effect.

The rebuilt Reflecting Pool holds about 4 million gallons of water. Since one gallon is about 3.785 liters, that means the pool contains roughly 15 million liters of water.

Now, if our magical vandal chemical is, in fact, trisodium phosphate, hereafter known as TSP, we need enough of it not merely to feed algae but to turn the whole pool into something like a giant paint-prep cleaning bath. A strong TSP solution is in the neighborhood of 10 to 15 grams per liter, so I split the difference and used 12.5 grams per liter.

That gives you 15 million liters of water times 12.5 grams per liter, which comes out to about 189 million grams of dry TSP, or about 417,000 pounds.

But if the vandals just dump loose powder into the pool, it is going to sit there for quite some time, so they would need to make it easily water-soluble first. Let’s assume a 10% TSP solution. A gallon of water weighs about 8.34 pounds, so a 10% solution carries about 0.834 pounds of TSP per gallon.

417,000 pounds divided by 0.834 pounds per gallon gives you almost exactly 500,000 gallons of solution.

Now, to transport 500,000 gallons, you are not talking about a guy with a jug and a grudge. If we are carrying this down there manually, we are talking about every registered Democrat in Prince George’s County walking down Independence Avenue with a gallon of vandal juice in their hand, and they will probably have to have some like-minded friends join them.

A better solution is tanker trucks, but we are still talking about somewhere between 45 and 80 tanker trucks. So let’s split the difference and call it 62 trucks.

That means somebody would have had to sneak 62 tanker trucks down near the monument grounds, presumably in the dark of night, without anybody noticing, and then empty them one by one into the Reflecting Pool.

Which kind of makes sense, because that is some Ocean’s Eleven shit. And George Clooney was in Ocean’s Eleven. And George Clooney is a prominent Democrat. So maybe this thing goes all the way to the top.

Except there is one tiny problem.

If you pour half a million gallons into a pool that already holds about 4 million gallons, you have increased the volume by about 12.5%. If the pool is already near its normal operating level, that is not just “adding chemicals.” That's about the same as if it rained heavily for about 10 hours only into the reflecting pool. You are going to have overflow, drainage, displacement, or some very obvious flooding.

So what Trump is asking us to believe is that a convoy of roughly 62 tanker trucks rolled up to one of the most watched public spaces in America, pumped half a million gallons of mystery chemical into the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, caused a probable water-level event, and somehow nobody noticed any of this until he heroically pointed it out.

That is not vandalism.

That is the plot of Mission: Implausible — Reflecting Pool Protocol.

Your mission, should you choose to believe it, is to dump 500,000 gallons of chemicals in front of half the federal government without anyone noticing.

Coming this summer, to a theatre near you.

I'm just saying.