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Condensed Metals


Slowswift

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Just wondering: To avoid consuming annoying amounts of metal, could you take a bunch of flakes or something and condense them into something pill-like? Sure would remove the bother of scratchy metal dust or hard to swallow chunks.

 

EDIT: A bit of clarification: Could you take a bunch of metal (say about a few cubic inches, I don't know, I'm bad at math) and condense it to about something the size of a pill, a la black hole (I don't know, I'm bad at science too)?

Edited by Slowswift
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Are you suggesting that the Iron and Zinc supplements found in supermarkets are a Dark Alley plot of some kind? Because it's definitely not, we don't do any kind of suspicious things like that at all.  :ph34r: 

On a serious note I can definitely see something like this becoming more common as Scadrials medicine advances and pills become more commonly used.

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It's an interesting idea, and whether it works or not comes down to one simple question: How important is surface area to the burning of metals? The flake method involves very high amounts of surface area in comparison to a pill. This could cause a decrease in allomantic efficiency due to there being less metal to burn at a given moment. Surface area does not matter in Feruchemy, but that being a different magic system could mean different rules.

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It's an interesting idea, and whether it works or not comes down to one simple question: How important is surface area to the burning of metals? The flake method involves very high amounts of surface area in comparison to a pill. This could cause a decrease in allomantic efficiency due to there being less metal to burn at a given moment. Surface area does not matter in Feruchemy, but that being a different magic system could mean different rules.

Given that Allomancers seem to be able to sense their entire reserves upon ingesting it not just the surface area I'd say it wouldn't matter, also Atium is generally ingested as beads and it's still the fastest burning metal we know of I believe.

It would be cool and interesting if it was related though, with modern metallurgists trying to discover how to create metals with greater and greater surface areas in an Allomantic arms race.

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Given that Allomancers seem to be able to sense their entire reserves upon ingesting it not just the surface area I'd say it wouldn't matter, also Atium is generally ingested as beads and it's still the fastest burning metal we know of I believe.

 

You also have to remember that each metal has an inherent property of burning speed. Given equal sized flakes of three different metals, each will burn for a different length of time, and that is why atium is the fastest burning, given my understanding of the novels. Increasing the surface area of an atium bead by cutting notches into it might make it burn even faster, or might have no effect on the rate at all.

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You also have to remember that each metal has an inherent property of burning speed. Given equal sized flakes of three different metals, each will burn for a different length of time, and that is why atium is the fastest burning, given my understanding of the novels. Increasing the surface area of an atium bead by cutting notches into it might make it burn even faster, or might have no effect on the rate at all.

I wasn't trying to imply that lower surface areas burn faster my point was just that either Atium has an insanely high burn speed comparatively and so even with reduced SA still burns faster or more likely IMO surface area has a limited effect on burn speed.

Also given that grinding metals into a powder would definitely have been possible throughout the entire series and would have significantly increased surface area I find it hard to believe that no one would have done so and discovered a difference in burn speed.

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Just wondering: To avoid consuming annoying amounts of metal, could you take a bunch of flakes or something and condense them into something pill-like? Sure would remove the bother of scratchy metal dust or hard to swallow chunks.

Ignoring the debate above me for the time being, I have to wonder how often someone would need that much reserve of a given metal. Something like pewter, which burns pretty fast would make sense, but unless you are trying to turn yourself into a savant, it doesn't seem like the comparatively massive reserve that ought to accompany something like a pill would really be necessary for most folks.
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I wasn't trying to imply that lower surface areas burn faster my point was just that either Atium has an insanely high burn speed comparatively and so even with reduced SA still burns faster or more likely IMO surface area has a limited effect on burn speed.

 

Ah, my apologies for misunderstanding.

 

 

Also given that grinding metals into a powder would definitely have been possible throughout the entire series and would have significantly increased surface area I find it hard to believe that no one would have done so and discovered a difference in burn speed.

 

It is interesting, and makes me wonder if grinding into a powder makes the metal too fine, such that it would burn away too quickly. This also makes me wonder if, when burning, all sources of the metal are being burned simultaneously, or if each flake is burned individually until it is gone, and the process moves to the next flake. My gut says it's the former, because that seems to make more intuitive sense. If that is the case, then a powder might be too fine because it would all disappear immediately rather than slowly burning away. I would say we can't really ascertain much on this until the mechanics of burning are known.

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Ah, my apologies for misunderstanding.

 

 

 

It is interesting, and makes me wonder if grinding into a powder makes the metal too fine, such that it would burn away too quickly. This also makes me wonder if, when burning, all sources of the metal are being burned simultaneously, or if each flake is burned individually until it is gone, and the process moves to the next flake. My gut says it's the former, because that seems to make more intuitive sense. If that is the case, then a powder might be too fine because it would all disappear immediately rather than slowly burning away. I would say we can't really ascertain much on this until the mechanics of burning are known.

Didn't Kelsier and Vin use Pewter in a powder a few times? From memory I think they used it when running to the rebel caves when they get attacked. It is an interesting point as to how exactly the rate of burn does work though, if surface area is not a factor then what determines which bit of metal is burned at which point in time? Is it sort of like radioactive decay where every particle has a random chance of being used and the average is what determines the rate?

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Didn't Kelsier and Vin use Pewter in a powder a few times? From memory I think they used it when running to the rebel caves when they get attacked. It is an interesting point as to how exactly the rate of burn does work though, if surface area is not a factor then what determines which bit of metal is burned at which point in time? Is it sort of like radioactive decay where every particle has a random chance of being used and the average is what determines the rate?

And Breeze used brass dust with water during the battle of luthadel when he ran out of his normal vials.

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I think Marasi uses Cadmium powder in Alloy of Law.

 

Metal shavings, I believe.  That's what Wax called them when he called her out on being an Allomancer.

 

And Wayne seems to eat his bendalloy in chunks, though if he wanted to, he could drop it into a cup of hot tea and it would liquefy.  Bendalloy has a really low melting point.

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Metal shavings, I believe.  That's what Wax called them when he called her out on being an Allomancer.

 

And Wayne seems to eat his bendalloy in chunks, though if he wanted to, he could drop it into a cup of hot tea and it would liquefy.  Bendalloy has a really low melting point.

that could be. Doing some renovation on the room that held my bookshelves, so all my books are boxed up and difficult to get to rigth now. hard to double check myself.

Bendalloy falls in with pewter as a very fast burning metal, so it makes sense that wayne would want to consume it in larger quantities, since he runs through it quicker than say wax with steel.

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Surface area might have some effect, since we know metals are burned from the outside in (Zane's fake atium).

 

I'm not sure that Zane's fake atium proves that. It was a hunk of lead covered in atium. Vin can't detect lead, so there's no reason to assume she wouldn't be able to burn from the inside-out or sort of everything at once. If we saw her swallow a bead of Allomantic metal A covered in metal B without detecting any reserves of metal A, then we might guess it has something to do with surface area.

Edited by Moogle
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So theory, very speculation. Wow.

 

*ahem*

 

A bit of clarification: Could you take a bunch of metal (say about a few cubic inches, I don't know, I'm bad at math) and condense it to about something the size of a pill, a la black hole (I don't know, I'm bad at science too)?

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Surface area might have some effect, since we know metals are burned from the outside in (Zane's fake atium).

Actually, that doesn't prove anything, because lead, which formed the center of the fake atium bead, is Allomantically inert. It could have still been burnable if it was what was encased in lead, or maybe not. Since it wasn't two combined burnable metals, we don't know.

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So theory, very speculation. Wow.

 

*ahem*

 

A bit of clarification: Could you take a bunch of metal (say about a few cubic inches, I don't know, I'm bad at math) and condense it to about something the size of a pill, a la black hole (I don't know, I'm bad at science too)?

Not really, solid matter doesn't compress well and if you did it'd likely change the nuclear makeup of the atoms resulting in it no longer being allomantically viable.

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So, correction on a previous post, but Vin and Kelsier actually used pewter beads when they ran to the rebel's battle with the Valtroux garrison. I think this settles the point that surface area does not produce a discernible effect on metal effectiveness or burning speed, or Kelsier would have opted for the more effective pewter dust. I think the pill theory works splendidly, and that people are thinking of metal burning too similarly to the process of a chemical reaction. Since the metal is being consumed in a process to direct Allomantic power rather than mixing with a reactant, it shouldn't matter how much of the atom's surface is exposed.

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Not really, solid matter doesn't compress well and if you did it'd likely change the nuclear makeup of the atoms resulting in it no longer being allomantically viable.

Uh, this is completely false. No method of physical compression is going to come close to affecting subatomic particles. Compress away, Scadrians. This process will work just fine. Actually, the only issue might be that condensed metals might be more easily affected by iron and steel, making them easier to get Pushed or Pulled away before consumption.

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Uh, this is completely false. No method of physical compression is going to come close to affecting subatomic particles. Compress away, Scadrians. This process will work just fine. Actually, the only issue might be that condensed metals might be more easily affected by iron and steel, making them easier to get Pushed or Pulled away before consumption.

The one method of physical compression mentioned: Black holes would probably do it, my point was just that you can't physically compress metals, unless you change their atomic makeup they're as dense as they're going to be.

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