What Makes a Great Magic System?

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Anthony

I mean, you can in principle solve problems in chemistry using physics, but it tends to be an unreasonably large amount of work for not much gain.

There is an emerging field called "chemical physics" which seems to be about doing just that. A friend's daughter is taking her undergraduate degree in it, so it isn't that specialised. There's a lot about electron shells.