The Most Powerful Twinborn

[Matrim]

7 hours ago, Elenion said:

I love doing stuff like this, with Google's help of course.

Some Googling tells me that heating due to friction against the air is negligible at subsonic speeds. So as long as your Steelrunner doesn't break the sound barrier (340.29 m/s, or 767.29 MPH), you're completely safe from burning up. You probably wouldn't want to go any faster than that in any "real-world" scenarios, anyway.

Interesting question. Running up walls I say no to, because gravity appears to affect Steelrunners as if they were in normal time (else they could get no traction on the ground because they'd have to float slowly down after each step). This makes sense due to the Steelrunner's Connection to their planet. Therefore, their speed wouldn't help them, so they wouldn't be able to run on a wall any more than you or I could.

As for running on water, I'll give that a tentative yes. Because the Steelrunning doesn't affect the water's surface tension like it does the Steelrunner's gravity, it would be the same as if an extremely fast human ran on normal water. A human going 30 m/s could do this (source), so I don't see why a Steelrunner couldn't. Basically, the Steelrunner would feel like they were running on a cornstarch/water mixture (YouTube the MythBusters doing that if you're unfamiliar with the concept).

 

4 hours ago, Idealistic Mistborn said:

Now you just awake the nerd in me.

Ok, as @Elenion said at low speed the heating due to air friction is minimal, but at speeds near of 340 m/s this heating increase, a plane has no problem with that, but I think a  human could die for it, so a steel compounder couldn´t run at the sound speed, he has to run a bit slower(<250-300 m/s).

But if he had hemalurgic spikes, well this changes things, he would needed ferruchemical brass, in order to decrease the heating due to friction and  allomantic pewter to resist the force due to the break of the sound barrier, with that he maybe could run even faster than 23 km/s, depends how strong pewter makes he and how much heat he can store.

This makes me think how fast the Lord Ruler could really run.

Awesome, much appreciated, gentlemen. I'll have to check out that mythbusters episode.

I feel like speed is one of the most powerful. With the proper precautions, and the proper utility, you could accomplish a great many things just by being fast.

[Oversleep]

9 hours ago, Elenion said:

Therefore, their speed wouldn't help them, so they wouldn't be able to run on a wall any more than you or I could.

... actually humans can run on walls. Me or you can get about one step, best; however an experienced traceur could do two or more. (this guy got two steps in and I'm pretty sure he has no steelminds)

You see, it's not about gravity. If you build up enough speed you can run up walls just fine. Gravity is working as usual, the thing is that by the time it would have slown you down enough you have already scaled the wall.

[Elenion]

The problem with that is you're actually not building up real speed; only the appearance of it. The water running example works because the "apparent" speed of your foot is many times faster than the water's breaking apart. However, this doesn't work with gravity because, as I extrapolated above, its pull on you increases (instead of 9.81 meters per second for everyone, it's 9.81 meters per second to your point of view and much more than that to everyone else). So even if you Compound speed, gravity scales to match, and so you still can't get more than 2 steps on the wall.

If the idea of gravity scaling is throwing you off, then I can show you the math that requires it to.

@Oversleep

[Oversleep]

I assume it's speculation? Or do you have any WoBs to back it up?

Anyway, this feels wrong on many levels. Show me your math but I think gravity scaling causes a lot more problems. I'll dig into it tomorrow.

[Spoolofwhool]

1 hour ago, Oversleep said:

I assume it's speculation? Or do you have any WoBs to back it up?

Anyway, this feels wrong on many levels. Show me your math but I think gravity scaling causes a lot more problems. I'll dig into it tomorrow.

I get what he's going for. Basically what he's thinking is this:

Consider these arbitrary numbers: Based on how you're walking/running, you're accelerating yourself upwards 4.9 m/s^2 each step, and you're taking 2 steps every second, so you're cancelling out gravity and remaining in the same place vertically. However, with steelrunning you would be upping your steps/s, so you would be overcompensating for gravity and pushing off from the ground and make your gait into a low bound. Therefore, increased gravity acceleration would be necessary to stop that. 

This is technically correct. However, increasing gravity is an explanation only if you're assuming they're maintaining the same gait. If they are using a modified gait which decreases upwards force and increases horizontal force, they could move without a bounding gait. They would probably look more speed skaters, with a steep forward lean.

[Kingsdaughter613]

Cap is Marvel, not DC.

[Elenion]

On 1/17/2017 at 7:35 PM, Spoolofwhool said:

I get what he's going for. Basically what he's thinking is this:

Consider these arbitrary numbers: Based on how you're walking/running, you're accelerating yourself upwards 4.9 m/s^2 each step, and you're taking 2 steps every second, so you're cancelling out gravity and remaining in the same place vertically. However, with steelrunning you would be upping your steps/s, so you would be overcompensating for gravity and pushing off from the ground and make your gait into a low bound. Therefore, increased gravity acceleration would be necessary to stop that. 

This is technically correct. However, increasing gravity is an explanation only if you're assuming they're maintaining the same gait. If they are using a modified gait which decreases upwards force and increases horizontal force, they could move without a bounding gait. They would probably look more speed skaters, with a steep forward lean.

That's exactly what I was trying to say; you just said it a lot clearer. 

Interesting workaround with the walking pattern. Say you were doubling your speed, but wanted to keep the same amount of footsteps as usual in order to move quickly forwards, then you'd just have to halve the force with which you push off of the ground, because the acceleration is applied twice as often in regards to this example's unchanging gravity.

Now I'm thinking: if you sped yourself up to 6x speed, you'd feel only 1/6 the gravity assuming it doesn't change, which would be comparable to running on the moon. *cue Googling about running speeds on the moon* Okay, while I don't have hard data, what I'm seeing is that if unencumbered by a spacesuit, you actually wouldn't lag too far behind a runner on Earth.

So then the only problem a Steelrunner would have is that if they ever wanted to change their speed while in motion, they'd have to change their stride length to compensate in order to avoid doing a glorious super-speeded faceplant.

[Aon Ati]

I know that a lot of people have discussed this in the above posts but I want to add my take on it. I would vote steel/steel but not just for the speed. You see, you don't have to tap an incredible amount of speed to be dangerous, just enough that guns and fists are too late. But there is another advantage that I haven't seen mentioned here. That being you also have Allomantic steel. Imagine it, a madman who is impossible to entrap, shoot, and even see at times but who also can shoot a metal projectile with pinpoint accuracy from hundreds of yards away. The death toll would be utterly devastating.

[+robardin]

On 1/13/2017 at 2:45 PM, Kingsdaughter613 said:

Just checked that: Saze uses zinc to tplot the tragectory of, and to catch, a lamp. In a couple of seconds. It isn't as obvious from the writing, but it appears to be the same thing.

So, how about F-zinc (speed of thought) with A-bendalloy (speed bubble)?

Imagine having an aluminum gun and being surrounded by enemies, even Metalborn ones. You put up a speed bubble and shoot them all. But wait, there's a "refraction effect" when using projectiles in or out of a time bubble, which is difficult to account for when firing. Well, with practice and mental speed, you could work it out.

 

[Landis963]

4 minutes ago, robardin said:

So, how about F-zinc (speed of thought) with A-bendalloy (speed bubble)?

Imagine having an aluminum gun and being surrounded by enemies, even Metalborn ones. You put up a speed bubble and shoot them all. But wait, there's a "refraction effect" when using projectiles in or out of a time bubble, which is difficult to account for when firing. Well, with practice and mental speed, you could work it out.

 

Feruchemical zinc would give you the optimal moment to drop the bubble and start firing.  Of course, Feruchemical steel would be better at timing, but you can't have only two feruchemical abilities outside of hemalurgy. 

[Faceless Mist-Wraith]

I think he's saying that you could calculate the refraction of the bullets, and adjust with other bullets while using f-zinc.

[+robardin]

1 hour ago, Faceless Mist-Wraith said:

I think he's saying that you could calculate the refraction of the bullets, and adjust with other bullets while using f-zinc.

Right, that the only reason someone like Wayne (who has A-bendalloy) can't already use his speed bubble to do a deadly burst of bullets is because of the refraction effect. Compensating for the refraction would require some complex adjustments: "aha, so when I do a speed bubble effect at 50% burn and radius R, the bullets go off at a 35% angle, so I should fire at THIS angle to get it corrected" - and to do so while actually firing a gun rapidly, in between one bullet's trajectory (to see how to adjust) and firing the next one (with the adjustment), is just not humanly possible... Unless you could speed up your thought process to a degree like Wax does with the Bands of Mourning during his showdown with his uncle.

 

Edited September 26, 2017 by robardin

[Nathrangking]

very underrated double chromium.