It is commonly joked amongst gnomes that the third chemical gnome was a result of an experiment by the first two. This joke is usually told with a lot of crude words, but the gist is not entirely wrong: experimentation is central to the lives of chemical gnomes. Their work is chemical engineering, but the fundamental sciences that drive that field are as important to them as life.

Chemical gnomes also experiment with everything else, including family structure, government, courtship, clothing, and even schools. Everything is being tested constantly to see how well it works, but their solutions to problems are often narrowly addressed through chemical engineering and basic science, not systems engineering, civil engineering, etc. As such, every family is a laboratory, often literally. Every local government is an experiment in transforming vehicular motion into local electrical power or some other ridiculous notion. Government is run by those who have the most exciting experiment at the time.

Yet the chemical engineers among the gnomes are so advanced and clever that they have invented many useful and wonderful things that help the entire world, and their society benefits from it greatly, as the concept of wealth takes second place to experimentation among them. Thus, most things benefit the whole community when a profit is made.