Speed Bubble in Water

[Kidpen]

Would any weird affects happen if someone was drowning and turned on a speed bubble? Also if they were drowning in shadesmar, would that be any different?

[Snipexe]

So if speed bubbles worked the way they technically should, then yes. But, because of this WOB

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Brandon Sanderson

Chapter Twelve

The group investigates the railroad tracks and canal

So, let's talk about the realities of speed bubbles. I did research on this, and got different answers from people on what really should happen if you could slow time like this. One of the issues is that light doesn't change speeds based on this sort of issue, so there was discussion of what things would look like inside looking out or outside looking in. It seems likely that there'd be some sort of red shift, and also that things might grow more dim inside a speed bubble. This is all really very theoretical, however, and so, in the end, I decided that there was enough disagreement among scientists with whom I spoke that it wouldn't be glaringly irregular if I just had the shimmer at the borders and stayed away from dealing with speed of light issues.

There's a much larger issue dealing with slowed time that rarely gets addressed by this type of fiction. I considered using it, and it's this: conservation of energy. Inside the speed bubble, Wax and Wayne are moving far more quickly, and therefore have a ton of kinetic energy compared to those outside of it. And so, a coin tossed from inside the bubble going outside would suddenly move with a proportional increase in speed (proportional to how much slower things were outside).

In essence, speed bubble = railgun.

This is dangerous for narrative reasons. I've often said that the limitations of a power are more interesting than the powers themselves. (It's Sanderson’s Second Law of Magics: Limitations > Powers.) One of the reasons for removing Mistborn and Full Feruchemists from the setting was so that we could focus in on the usefulness of the individual powers in Allomancy and Feruchemy. That falls by the wayside if any of the individual powers become too strong on their own.

I didn't want Wayne to be able to slow time, then sit inside his bubble and leisurely pick off enemies one at a time. And so, I had to place strong limitations on the speed bubbles. (Much stronger limitations than on other aspects of Allomancy. Pushing and Pulling, for example, have their limitations based in solid science. With speed bubbles, I eventually decided that solid science made them way too powerful. So I had to change things.) Therefore, the rules became: No shooting/throwing things out of speed bubbles, no moving speed bubbles, and a required couple second cool-down between creating different speed bubbles. The first rule broke required objects to be deflected when leaving the bubble and that we have the bubble absorb excess kinetic energy when something leaves it.

Disappointing for the scientists, I know, but it makes for a stronger story.

source

it does not appear to be that way. The person drowns, and dies either way.

[Apollyon]

Depending on what bubble it is, the results will be different. Either way, the person inside the bubble will drown at the same rate as they normally would from their point of view. In a Bendalloy bubble, anyone viewing the bubble from outside would see a librarian dying unusually fast. Opposite for cadmium. As for an educator’s lens, the librarian would just experience their watery (or in this case, beady) demise half as fast.

[+hwiles]

On 4/16/2018 at 7:24 PM, Kidpen said:

Would any weird affects happen if someone was drowning and turned on a speed bubble? Also if they were drowning in shadesmar, would that be any different?

Yeah, a cadmium bubble would give responders mire time to save you. Flaring cadmium in your deaththrows, you could probably really REALLY extend time. The bubble might also pop from the strain of the mass flow rate of the water if you were in a strong current, but otherwise I imagine the fluid you were drowning in would obey the same rules as air, in that there's a little deflection and swirling, but it's mostly negligible.

[ScarletSabre]

On 19/04/2018 at 8:05 PM, hwiles said:

Yeah, a cadmium bubble would give responders mire time to save you. Flaring cadmium in your deaththrows, you could probably really REALLY extend time. The bubble might also pop from the strain of the mass flow rate of the water if you were in a strong current, but otherwise I imagine the fluid you were drowning in would obey the same rules as air, in that there's a little deflection and swirling, but it's mostly negligible.

I'm now imagining Cadmium Medallions being used almost as lifejackets on a boat...

Another question is what happens if you use a Cadmium bubble in the air, while falling from a height? Would your fall slow down, but since the bubble itself is static, would you then fall to the edge of the bubble and pass through, collapsing it in the process?

[+hwiles]

5 hours ago, ScarletSabre said:

I'm now imagining Cadmium Medallions being used almost as lifejackets on a boat...

Another question is what happens if you use a Cadmium bubble in the air, while falling from a height? Would your fall slow down, but since the bubble itself is static, would you then fall to the edge of the bubble and pass through, collapsing it in the process?

I think the bubble would pop instantly, like on the carriage, resulting in uncomfortable whiplash for the user. It might be possible to throw a bubble every 2 seconds (the fastest they can be opened) to diffuse your momentum (by partially redirecting it in a random direction) and therefore be able to survive falls from much greater heights.

[ScarletSabre]

22 hours ago, hwiles said:

I think the bubble would pop instantly, like on the carriage, resulting in uncomfortable whiplash for the user. It might be possible to throw a bubble every 2 seconds (the fastest they can be opened) to diffuse your momentum (by partially redirecting it in a random direction) and therefore be able to survive falls from much greater heights.

That's what I was thinking, but also that with the size Cadmium bubbles can be, (The size of a small room, if I recall correctly), it would take longer to fall to the boundary if you made the bubble as large as you could. Only a couple of seconds, but with a time dialation bubble like this that's very relative, since more time could be given for your rescue... Of course you would also reach terminal velocity sooner, since you'd be falling for longer within your time bubbles....

This is a puzzler. o3o At least to me