Handwavium

My handwavium was an invented mineral, but - reading up - what about platinum? Could I substitute platinum for handwavium?

It made no sense to him that their very impossibility was their pleasure. He puzzled over the spacecraft and their handwavium drives. "The thousand and one nights of Scheherazade, told by an engineering student who failed his graduation exams," was his literary judgment.

She writes romantic fantasy and science fiction, and makes liberal use of the substance known as handwavium.