Unit for Investiture

[FiveLate]

I have been looking around a bit, but with so much source material and the esoteric nature of the question, I might have not found the correct search parameters.  

Has Brandon given us a unit for Investiture? Ie.energy in general is joules, electricity is watts, mechanical work is horse power..... Investiture is?

[CaptainRyan]

5 minutes ago, FiveLate said:

I have been looking around a bit, but with so much source material and the esoteric nature of the question, I might have not found the correct search parameters.  

Has Brandon given us a unit for Investiture? Ie.energy in general is joules, electricity is watts, mechanical work is horse power..... Investiture is?

The short answer, as far as I am aware, is no. There has been discussion of it before but I do not think Brandon has allowed this to be canonically defined. Frankly, I'd be surprised if he did.

[+Extesian]

I seem to remember a recent WoB that they are developing a standard measurement but that they may never release it. Certainly there's a couple of slightly older statements specifically regarding Breath/Stormlight levels

Quote

Interview: Mar 19th, 2014

WoR Signing Report - darkanimereal1 and luke (Verbatim)

Question ()

How much stormlight equals one breath? Do you have an actual ratio?

Brandon Sanderson

I have a ratio. It's not on me.

Question

Okay, that's a Peter question again.

Brandon Sanderson

Yeah, well, I may not answer it even then.

Quote

Interview: Mar 20th, 2014

WOR Signing Report - IronCaf (Paraphrased)

Outis

How much Stormlight is equal to one Breath?

Brandon Sanderson

This is one of the times I have to go to Peter and say, They're asking, we have to canonize this.

 

[FiveLate]

Well it seems very clear to me that the unit is the Pahlstrom.

[+hwiles]

1 hour ago, FiveLate said:

I have been looking around a bit, but with so much source material and the esoteric nature of the question, I might have not found the correct search parameters.  

Has Brandon given us a unit for Investiture? Ie.energy in general is joules, electricity is watts, mechanical work is horse power..... Investiture is?

Id suggest that you try analyzing scenes involving the surge of gravitation. If you can find a scene where Kaladin or Szeth draw in stormlight from an exact number of "identical" gems, and quantify the total energy of their lashings, you'd have a reasonable basis for a standard unit.

Or maybe analyzing healing magic vs the energy required for cells to grow and divide, though this seems harder...

[FiveLate]

@hwiles you will see where my thoughts are running soon enough.  I am actually focusing on Scadrial for the 1.0 version.  But stormlight and gravitation is a very good second method of investigation.

[+hwiles]

Nice. Then I'd recommend pewter allomancy analysis. I believe Kel tells Vin how long a pewter bead takes to burn at one point. Then they sprint for like 24 hrs. Vin isn't super athletic without pewter, so you can probably safely assume virtually all of the energy of that run comes from pewter, estimate the size of a pewter bead, and back calculate the number of beads she swallows using the distance they travel over the duration of their run.

Hope that helps more than it hinders.

[Farnsworth]

We'd need a unit that has an exact amount, every single time. An allomantic bead can be measured fairly accurately by weight, but the results are difficult to measure exactly. In mental metals such as zinc, it is difficult to measure the person's reaction because it is an emotional response. In physical ones such as tin, you have to keep the allomancer's original physical abilities into account before measuring, and that is difficult to do. With Stormlight, since the stormlight leaks out of the gems, it isn't really possible to get a consitant unit. You could measure them right after a highstorm, but we don't yet know if each highstorm has the same amount of investiture. You could measure the amount of investiture in a single grain of sand on Taldain, but the sand gets it's investiture from fungus that grows on it, and maybe some fungus grows more on some grains than others. Since Dor flows into a person over time, there is no way that can be measure. Lightsong complains that he is always fed breath from children because as people get older, their breath gets weaker. So Breaths are not constant. The only constant unit that I can think of is a Divine Breath. They are given out by a shard, and I imagine Endowment is fair about giving everybody equal amounts. They don't seem to disappear, and they are easy to measure. So I'd say the best way to measure Investiture is through units of Divine Breath.

[FiveLate]

Lol I think I am swamped with too much info at This point....

Edited August 17, 2017 by FiveLate

[Kurkistan]

We kinda-sorta maybe know the basic unit is based on Breaths.

On 12/8/2016 at 6:13 PM, Emerald101 said:

About how many breath's worth of investiture would it take to create a gram of Atium? Would it be the same for Lerasium? How long would a gram-sized piece of atium last when being burnt, assuming no flaring?

Note: I asked at BYU signing what a unit of investiture would be (maybe something Khriss uses) and he RAFO'd on the canon term for it but said that for 17s shard purposes we could assume it would be based around the breath.

 

[Emerald101]

Let me clarify on that WoB. From what he said, the unit of investiture will definitely be based on the breath. The hesitancy was with regard to the canon name of that unit.

 

[AbsentKeeper]

On 8/17/2017 at 9:36 AM, Kurkistan said:

We kinda-sorta maybe know the basic unit is based on Breaths.

 

Even if we do know that the units are based on Breaths, that leaves a lot of variables. We know that some people naturally have stronger Breath than others, and that a childs Breath is more 'vigorous' than an adults.

Perhaps the unit will be based on a Divine Breath, which seem to be pretty much equal across the board, based on evidence from the text.

Alternatively, perhaps the unit that eventually becomes the Cosmere standard will originate on Nalthis, and it doesn't need to go any deeper than that.