The Joule-Thompson-Sanderson effect

[Bean]

AKA why the cosmere is a cold, cold place.

 

If this exists elsewhere or blatantly contradicts WoB let me know. But I couldn't find it.

 

I noticed something interesting recently as I was pondering the works of Sanderson. It connects a few magical things here and there and I thought it might bring greater understanding to magic in the cosmere.

 

First some boring science. The Joule-Thompson effect is a property of gases that says that as a given amount(mass) of gas decreases in volume its temperature will rise. the opposite is also true. This is how your refrigerator operates. I compresses gas, lets  it cool then releases it back to its normal density resulting in cool air in the fridge.

 

In a few magical instances we have seen matter act colder than it ought to. My thought is that infusions of spiritual energy result in a kind of opposite Joule-Thompson effect bringing cold.

 

The prime example is the mists in Mistborn. I believe that the mists themselves are really just water vapor. we see them leave dew and make the stones wet. we know that sufficient heat can burn the mists away just like regular mist. But the mists are appearing when the air should be too warm to cause water vapor to form like that.

 

We know that atium and lerasium are just normal matter with some extra spiritual hoodoo about them. I submit that the mists are just water vapor with the same situation. The spiritual influence grants the vapor some resistance to the dissipating effects of heat. As the power of the mists grow, this resistance increases, meaning that they stay longer and longer.

 

Another excellent example is the summoning of a shardblade. water vapor forms on the blade. We know that the blade is stored in the spiritual realm and its sudden appearance would technically create density where none exists. In my mind I would think that this would create heat, but because of the JBSE it does not.

 

In a slightly less sketchier example, during the highstorm it is freezing cold for Kaladin. in the middle of a hurricane it is probably pretty cold anyway, but I'm throwing this in there anyway.

 

And now for some bogus physics and wild speculation on why this might work. If you want to poke holes in the theory, this is where I would start. My understanding of physics is decent, but its late at this point. Lets say I have two blocks of generic matter of the same volume, but different densities. one is heavier, one is lighter but they are both the same size and are made of the same material. They are also both the same average temperature. If I stuck them both in the oven for 30 min and then take them both out, the lighter block will have a higher average temperature than the heavier one. The heavier one requires more energy to get to the same average temperature. Suddenly some Shard (lets call him Randomness) bestows some power into the lighter block. Correct me if I'm wrong but most, if not all, things has at least some component in each of the 3 realms. This would apply to energy too. The block is experiencing energy in the physical realm as heat. Suddenly the blocks spiritual aspect has some weird other thing attached to it giving it some power or other. Because it's spiritual mass(Smass) increased it is now denser(spiritually) and requires more energy to heat.

 

Does this make complete sense? no way! This means that allomancers would have a lower body temperature than normal people. But hey, maybe that's whats up with mistcloaks.

 

Application: if a guy with a shardblade wanted cold lemonade all he has to do is keep summoning his blade in the glass. More importantly if we can identify times when things turned cold or collected condensation where they shouldn't have we might be able to identify magical moments we were not aware of.

 

Edit: added application so you know why it matters

Edited October 31, 2013 by Bean

[Argent]

Aaah, magical science! We lovesss it, preciousss, yesss, we lovesss it!

 

Let's see. For about half of your write-up I thought your theory was going to essentially be "when matter/energy transitions from the sRealm and into the pRealm, it arrives cold. Therefore, either the sRealm exists in a lower energy state (on average), or in a state of higher pressure." 

 

Having read your entire write-up, I feel like you kind of suggest this, but in a roundabout way. First, and we really need a big WARNING: MAGICAL SCIENCE sign for things like this, we don't know whether energy itself exists in all three realms. I guess it makes sense that it does (since matter is really just energy, and matter does exist in all three), but it's not something anyone has asked Peter. The reason I bring this up is because if energy (as understood by us, not by the people in the cosmere; I suspect they might attach Investiture-specific attributes to their definition of energy...) is purely a physical phenomenon, then its effects on objects in the pRealm probably won't affect the other two. If it interacts in a similar fashion with objects' aspects in all three realms, however, then I can kind of see how by the Laws of Hockus Pockus we can get a

[++ physical energy] > [++ physical mass] > [++ spiritual mass] > [++ spiritual density] > [-- physical temperature]

kind of reaction. I will say though, this bothers me - this essentially says that pouring more energy into a physical system actually decreases its energy by increasing its energy state.

 

But I am also going to pull the "it's late and I am tired" card on everyone and magically dismiss any rebuttals to my words until such a time that I can fix them.

[Gloom]

I like the theory, at least the beginning. I kinda got lost along the way, but I think I got the gist of it.

[The Count]

I like it...

 

My only issue is this bit:

 

Lets say I have two blocks of generic matter of the same volume, but different densities. one is heavier, one is lighter but they are both the same size and are made of the same material.

 

Density is a material property so having two blocks of the same matter with identical volumes but different densities is physically impossible.

 

Or do you mean that they take up the same space (one is hollow for example).

 

This still may not be enough since the materials would have the same specific heat capacity so any change in termerature due to the time in the oven would be a factor of the different volumes of matter.

 

The only way I can see this working is either:

 

1/ Investiture in an initial condition of the experiment:

 

So your two blocks are identical material, size and shape but one is invested and the other is the control.

 

You can then do the heating experiment to see if the investiture alters the take up of heat energy.

 

2/ The investiture is the the input

 

So you let both identical blocks settle to normal room temperature, have Randomness invest one of them and measure any resulting temperature drop. The uninvested block still supplies a control group. 

 

In general I like the theory though.. physics is cool. Magic Physics is super awesome cool.

 

 

EDIT: I was a research physicist in my younger days, really wich I could carry out this experiment. Someone get me a Feruchemically charged bracer!

Edited October 31, 2013 by MadRand

[Oudeis]

When Szeth uses the lashings he gets so cold, frost forms on him.

[Argent]

The same applies to Kaladin, and maybe Shallan, as well. I believe this is unique to Stormlight, however. Burning metals, for example, is described alongside a warm sensation, I think.

[Bean]

For about half of your write-up I thought your theory was going to essentially be "when matter/energy transitions from the sRealm and into the pRealm, it arrives cold. Therefore, either the sRealm exists in a lower energy state (on average), or in a state of higher pressure." 

This was the other possibility that I was looking at to explain the phenomonon, but I didn't like the explanation quite as much because in order for the arriving spiritual energy/matter to lower the temp it would have to change the pMass. Since we don't see any instance of objects gaining weight as they are invested this seems unlikely.

 

 

 If it interacts in a similar fashion with objects' aspects in all three realms, however, then I can kind of see how by the Laws of Hockus Pockus we can get a

[++ physical energy] > [++ physical mass] > [++ spiritual mass] > [++ spiritual density] > [-- physical temperature]

kind of reaction. I will say though, this bothers me - this essentially says that pouring more energy into a physical system actually decreases its energy by increasing its energy state.

The basis of this theory is that the physical mass, density and volume don't change at all (except the gasses do as a result of the cold but that is after). What I'm saying is there is a difference between the pEnergy and whatever spiritual thing is going on. I would say if the water vapor suddenly had greater sEnergy and the temp dropped, it would still have the same pEnergy.

 

@madrand you can indeed have two solid objects of the same volume of different density. Think of styrofoam. You can compress it to be smaller. You are partially right though in that you are eliminating small pockets of empty space throughout the mass.

 

In other news, I have another theory on why this works: what if the temperature doesn't change at all? If you take a piece of ice and put pressure on it, you can change its state of matter from solid to liquid without changing its temperature. If you place a string with weights on each end on top of an ice block and let the weights dangle, the string will eventually fall out the bottom. Salting ice does much the same thing, it alters the state of matter without altering the temperature. What if instead of making things colder all the magical infusion does is raise the temperature required to form mist or water condensation?

[Argent]

As a redeeming factor of the theory I thought you would advocate (and the one I actually kind of support), the Dor was described to exist in a place of high pressure, pushing against the rifts Elantrians create with their Aons. This supports the idea that the Spiritual Realm (where the Dor, like other Shardic powers, likely "resides") in a pretty dense place.

[Gloom]

Yes, Brandon has made mention of release valves and pressure, especially when referring to splintered Shards. I appears that pressure is definitely involved in the process.

[Shardlet]

@madrand you can indeed have two solid objects of the same volume of different density. Think of styrofoam. You can compress it to be smaller. You are partially right though in that you are eliminating small pockets of empty space throughout the mass.

 

Afraid Madrand is exactly right, not just partially right.  Block polystyrene indeed has a greater density that foamed polystyrene (i.e., styrofoam).  However, that is because most of the volume of foamed polystyrene is occupied by a gas (i.e., hollow as Madrand accounted for).  You've got a bit of a red herring analysis.  You are comparing two different volumes of the material in question (that is, volume of the material itself rather than volume of the block) and are failing to account for the porosity and different thermal conductivity pathways resulting from the porosity as well as whatever is occupying the pores (e.g., vaccum, gas, etc.).

Edited October 31, 2013 by Shardlet

[Bean]

Shardlet, I think you are focused too much on the example I gave (which may indeed be flawed) and less on the principle I'm trying to demonstrate with it. When I said same volume I meant by dimension of the block so the same surface area. I, perhaps, could have gone through the example changed it to two blocks with the same volume, but different material that are similar in their conductivity, but one is for some reason denser than the other. Also I didn't mean to imply that the matter the block was composed of was Styrofoam. I was just figving an (admittedly bad) example of differing densities among solids. 

 

Anyway the point is that while I haven't found a great reason why this works I think something like this is what is happening in the mists and on those shardblades.

[Oudeis]

Hrm... we know allomancy is end-positive, it receives power directly from Preservation. We know hemalurgy is end-negative, and that power is lost when it is used. Either of those cases could account for why any given power either generates or takes in heat.

 

Do we know of any form of Investiture besides feruchemy that is confirmed as end-neutral? I feel like those would be the only ones where we can account for, "this is clearly the case," and not due to a discrepancy in other forms of energy. Apart from brass and its clearly unique instance, I don't think we've heard anywhere that feruchemy affects temperature, even for pewter or iron where mass or weight are gained or lost.

 

In conclusion, I think it might be that temperature variance is a side-effect of specific increases/decreases in energy due to the nature of given powers, and is not a universally inherent thing. Thought obviously one example is hardly enough to go by.

[Kurkistan]

BioChroma may be end-neutral, depending on how you define it. Apart from the initial color to fuel the transfer, nothing is ever really gained or lost when using Breath.

Edited October 31, 2013 by Kurkistan

[Moogle]

BioChroma may be end-neutral, depending on how you define it. Apart from the initial color to fuel the transfer, nothing is ever really gained or lost when using Breath.

 

Breaths are constantly being created though, so I think you could argue it is an end-positive system, particularly if there's a growing population and/or people sell Breaths (and the people they sell them to pass them on).

[Kurkistan]

Yes, but by that logic then Feruchemy is end-positive because new Feruchemists are being born and can start storing their attributes (which are Investiture of some kind) in metalminds. On the level of use, though, both are neutral.

Edited October 31, 2013 by Kurkistan

[Argent]

Ditto. Whether a system is end-neutral depends solely on the difference between the amount of Investiture going in and the amount going out. As an Allomancer or Elantrian, for example, you don't invest anything into the system - you just access the power of the respective Shard. You don't give anything of yourself, you just open a door. In Feruchemy what you take out is what you put in.

But I see how BioChroma COULD be neutral... You put the Breaths in, you get their worth of Investiture out. The question here is, when you Awaken, I'd the object moved SOLELY by your Breaths or are those Breaths tapping Endowment's power as well for extra juice.

[The Count]

BioChroma may be end-neutral, depending on how you define it. Apart from the initial color to fuel the transfer, nothing is ever really gained or lost when using Breath.

 

What about Nightblood?

 

When unsheathed, he consumes the beraths of the weilder as fuel, therefore end positive (or negative I suppose depending on persepective). Is this a special case?

[Oudeis]

BioChroma may be end-neutral, depending on how you define it. Apart from the initial color to fuel the transfer, nothing is ever really gained or lost when using Breath.

 

My question here is where you say "apart from the initial color". ... Why apart from that? It's something that's lost. I think that matters.

 

However, I actually think that it makes BioChroma end-positive. The color, like the steel of a Coinshot, gets used up in the process. In the case of Awakening, you get a rope which can fling boulders. In the case of a Coinshot, you get a force which can fling a person away from a gate. In both cases, the thing lost could not possibly provide (by the laws of physics) enough energy to produce the effect, particularly in the case of Awakening where the object can remain animated forever if nothing interrupts it. (Hrm, someone should show that. A family heirloom or national artifact which is an object that was Awakened seven hundred years ago and is still "gripping" whatever it had been told to).

 

BioChroma invests a Breath that typically you get back and loses color, and provides you with far more power than makes any manner of sense. In addition, in he case of a Lifeless you don't get back the Breath, and as @MadRand pointed out Nightblood consumes Breaths. None of these strike me as end-neutral.

 

Something is always lost in BioChroma, yes. But you get back far more than you put in. I think BioChroma clearly must draw power from Endowment, likely from the Spiritual Realm, and is thus end-positive.

[Kurkistan]

What about Nightblood?

 

When unsheathed, he consumes the beraths of the weilder as fuel, therefore end positive (or negative I suppose depending on persepective). Is this a special case?

 

NIGHTBLOOD. IS. WEIRD!          

 

In all seriousness, though, I think that even Nightblood ends up being end-neutral. When a Feruchemist uses up an attribute in his metalmind, that attribute is gone. Yet we still call it end-neutral. Nightblood seems to use up the full power of the Breath he consumes, but he doesn't necessarily squander it (ala Hemalurgy) nor does he seem to gain any special boosts of power beyond that contained within the Breath already (ala Allomancy).

 

He might be end-negative, though, considering that his energy needs go up the longer he is wielded. Or he might just become more powerful to compensate for the increased energy requirement. It's unclear.

 

My question here is where you say "apart from the initial color". ... Why apart from that? It's something that's lost. I think that matters.

 

I agree that it matters but, given that it's only ever used the very first instant when you Awaken something, I think it logical that the color only fuels the transfer itself.

 

 However, I actually think that it makes BioChroma end-positive. The color, like the steel of a Coinshot, gets used up in the process. In the case of Awakening, you get a rope which can fling boulders. In the case of a Coinshot, you get a force which can fling a person away from a gate. In both cases, the thing lost could not possibly provide (by the laws of physics) enough energy to produce the effect, particularly in the case of Awakening where the object can remain animated forever if nothing interrupts it. (Hrm, someone should show that. A family heirloom or national artifact which is an object that was Awakened seven hundred years ago and is still "gripping" whatever it had been told to).

 

You're making a rather large oversight here in your comparison of BioChroma and Allomancy: the Breath. You don't just use up some color and get a rope that flings stuff: you use up the color and transfer a hundred Breath or so and only then do you get an Awakened object. Hello energy source.

 

So "the thing that is lost" is both color and the transferred Breath (though the Breath isn't really "lost", since it can be recovered.)

 

So far as the national heirloom thing: we kind of have that. Kalad's Phantoms were Lifeless that lasted ~300 years. But with non-Lifeless objects, apparently, the Breath starts to peel off after some period of time because Brandon didn't want to break Nalthis' society.

 

P.S. Technically, the energy contained within the flakes of metal Allomancers burn, if the metal is truly destroyed completely, is orders of magnitude greater than what you get from the Allomantic effect. This has zero bearing on theorizing, but that always an amusing fact to bring up.

 

 BioChroma invests a Breath that typically you get back and loses color, and provides you with far more power than makes any manner of sense. In addition, in he case of a Lifeless you don't get back the Breath, and as @MadRand pointed out Nightblood consumes Breaths. None of these strike me as end-neutral.

 

With Lifeless, the Breath is still doing stuff despite the fact that you can't get it back, so it's not "lost" in terms of where its power went.

 

 Something is always lost in BioChroma, yes. But you get back far more than you put in. I think BioChroma clearly must draw power from Endowment, likely from the Spiritual Realm, and is thus end-positive.

 

I strongly disagree. As I implied to MadRand, I think a Breath provides its own juice. Just like a Feruchemist provides his own power, so too do I think people's "souls" in the Cosmere do the same (and Breath are a part of those souls). Whenever you Awaken an object you "put in" an incredibly large number of Breaths that were otherwise raising you to X Heightening and providing sensory and health boosts. And recall that it takes dozens or hundreds of Breath to get anything done with normal objects: it follows, then, that each Breath is providing its own small amount of continuous power to get the job done.

Edited November 1, 2013 by Kurkistan

[Isomere]

@kurk: "Breath provides its own juice" is exactly my definition of end-positive. I think the reason people's souls produce energy is because they contain innate investiture. This small chunk of Adonalsium generates the power of creation within each human. If you gather up enough of this investiture you can use the power for other things like Awakening. Since the breath is not consumed it is not fuel, but rather acts as a generator or perhaps an access point for the power of creation.

Back to the JTSE, I like the theory, and we probably should keep an eye out for unwarranted moisture. For example, the fact that Taln was soaking wet makes me think his body was newly formed when shows up at the gates near the end of WOK. The physics of realmatic interactions are going to be difficult to prove or disprove, but the theories are fun and seem to work.

Edited November 1, 2013 by Isomere

[Kurkistan]

@kurk: "Breath provides its own juice" is exactly my definition of end-positive. I think the reason people's souls produce energy is because they contain innate investiture. This small chunk of Adonalsium generates the power of creation within each human. If you gather up enough of this investiture you can use the power for other things like Awakening. Since the breath is not consumed it is not fuel, but rather acts as a generator or perhaps an access point for the power of creation.

 

Fair enough, but could you please explain how Feruchemy isn't end-positive under this definition? How is an Aluminum ferring doing anything but storing and retrieving some aspect of the power generated by their soul?

Edited November 1, 2013 by Kurkistan

[Oudeis]

It is going to be very hard to reply to you, Kurk, because I look at all the things you say and they all seem to support my statements, yet you claim to disagree.

 

 
 I think that even Nightblood ends up being end-neutral. When a Feruchemist uses up an attribute in his metalmind, that attribute is gone. Yet we still call it end-neutral. Nightblood seems to use up the full power of the Breath he consumes, but he doesn't necessarily squander it (ala Hemalurgy) nor does he seem to gain any special boosts of power beyond that contained within the Breath already (ala Allomancy).

 

He might be end-negative, though, considering that his energy needs go up the longer he is wielded. Or he might just become more powerful to compensate for the increased energy requirement. It's unclear.

 

You're skipping half of feruchemy. When a feruchemist uses up an attribute, yes it is gone. But it was put there in the first place by him. Weight, sight, heat, these are things which can be measured, and they are measured equally going in versus coming out.

 

You can talk about "the energy of a Breath" but unless someone has a WoB I've never seen, we have no way to calculate what that is. You can guess and theorize and say what seems "likely", but we can't know what that is, which is a large part of what makes it unclear whether he's end-positive, -neutral, or -negative. We can calculate the amount of energy it would take to disintegrate a wall, but not only do we have no way to get an accurate estimate of how many Breaths he consumed while doing so, we also have no earthly way to calculate the energy of each Breath in any earth-type unit.

 

I agree that it matters but, given that it's only ever used the very first instant when you Awaken something, I think it logical that the color only fuels the transfer itself.

 

Even if that were the case, which it might be, why are you dismissing it? End-neutrality doesn't care what purpose energy goes towards, it just cares that it was used.

 

You're making a rather large oversight here in your comparison of BioChroma and Allomancy: the Breath. You don't just use up some color and get a rope that flings stuff: you use up the color and transfer a hundred Breath or so and only then do you get an Awakened object. Hello energy source.

 

But then when you're done, you get the Breaths back, all of them, exactly how you left them. The God King's Breaths have been around for three hundred years, and none of them seem terribly tired or rundown. Feruchemy is end-neutral because you can become weak to store up strength, and when you use up exactly that amount of strength (and yes I know if you multiply it there's some diminishing returns but that's not what we're talking about right now). The Breaths are only the energy source if they get used up. They don't; like the steel of allomancy, they are simply a catalyst that grants you the Investiture from the Spiritual Realm. Energy is gained, thus end-positive.

 

I strongly disagree. As I implied to MadRand, I think a Breath provides its own juice. Just like a Feruchemist provides his own power, so too do I think people's "souls" in the Cosmere do the same (and Breath are a part of those souls). Whenever you Awaken an object you "put in" an incredibly large number of Breaths that were otherwise raising you to X Heightening and providing sensory and health boosts. And recall that it takes dozens or hundreds of Breath to get anything done with normal objects: it follows, then, that each Breath is providing its own small amount of continuous power to get the job done.

 

Breaths providing power from the Spiritual Realm is the literal definition of end-positivity. A feruchemist provides his own power by... well okay it varies. You provide strength by burning caloric energy. Your eyesight is... okay not really technically using energy... okay this is getting messy but the point is, the power comes from your physical body, the physical realm. It can be measured in ways that make sense and are not infinite. The Spiritual Realm is a world made out of power. It does whatever AonDor tells it to. It can be channeled by brass to enflame the emotions of those around you. In the shape of a Shardblade it slices through stone without effort.

 

When the Breaths you hold raise you to Heightenings and provide you with benefits, those are being powered from the Spiritual Realm, too. If you had to provide the power yourself, Susebron would have to eat butter literally every minute of the day to keep ahead of how much energy those Breaths required of him. End-positivity means that Investiture is giving you more power than you started with. I'm really going to have to ask you to be more specific about "people's souls in the Cosmere provide energy" if you aren't saying that it's direct infusion of power from the Spiritual Realm, because that it what end-positive means. Just because literally everyone on Nalthis has a tiny touch of Endowment, just because it's the norm there, doesn't mean it isn't end-positivity. It just means that in a technical sense, every non-Drab on Nalthis is participating in a very, very little bit of end-positive Investiture.

 

@kurk: "Breath provides its own juice" is exactly my definition of end-positive. I think the reason people's souls produce energy is because they contain innate investiture. This small chunk of Adonalsium generates the power of creation within each human. If you gather up enough of this investiture you can use the power for other things like Awakening. Since the breath is not consumed it is not fuel, but rather acts as a generator or perhaps an access point for the power of creation.

 

Yes, yes, everything about this.

[Kurkistan]

It is going to be very hard to reply to you, Kurk, because I look at all the things you say and they all seem to support my statements, yet you claim to disagree.

 

Always a tragic state of affairs, I must say. Let's see if we can't sort it out.

 

You're skipping half of feruchemy. When a feruchemist uses up an attribute, yes it is gone. But it was put there in the first place by him. Weight, sight, heat, these are things which can be measured, and they are measured equally going in versus coming out.

 

You can talk about "the energy of a Breath" but unless someone has a WoB I've never seen, we have no way to calculate what that is. You can guess and theorize and say what seems "likely", but we can't know what that is, which is a large part of what makes it unclear whether he's end-positive, -neutral, or -negative. We can calculate the amount of energy it would take to disintegrate a wall, but not only do we have no way to get an accurate estimate of how many Breaths he consumed while doing so, we also have no earthly way to calculate the energy of each Breath in any earth-type unit.

 

You can talk about "the energy of a Breath" but unless someone has a WoB I've never seen, we have no way to calculate what that is. You can guess and theorize and say what seems "likely", but we can't know what that is, which is a large part of what makes it unclear whether he's end-positive, -neutral, or -negative. We can calculate the amount of energy it would take to disintegrate a wall, but not only do we have no way to get an accurate estimate of how many Breaths he consumed while doing so, we also have no earthly way to calculate the energy of each Breath in any earth-type unit.

 

A fair enough criticism. I agree that we don't know for sure either way, but I think we can both agree that the rest of BioChroma being end-neutral (so not drawing on Endowment) would argue for Nightblood being end-neutral as well. The same for the converse.

 

Or Nightblood could just be WEIRD.

 

Even if that were the case, which it might be, why are you dismissing it? End-neutrality doesn't care what purpose energy goes towards, it just cares that it was used.

 

I dismiss it mainly because it's a relatively small part of the magic system. All the truly power-requiring and interesting stuff happens after the Breath-transfer and can keep happening at the same power-level for centuries, so I'd think that the color is of minimal import.

 

As to the end-neutrality of it all, I would say that the use of color is either slipping towards a bit of a credit on the ledgers or is balanced out by the energy of the Cognitive transfer (which I can go on about, if you'd like ). Either way, I don't think it leads us towards the positivity of Endowment stepping in.

 

But then when you're done, you get the Breaths back, all of them, exactly how you left them. The God King's Breaths have been around for three hundred years, and none of them seem terribly tired or rundown. Feruchemy is end-neutral because you can become weak to store up strength, and when you use up exactly that amount of strength (and yes I know if you multiply it there's some diminishing returns but that's not what we're talking about right now). The Breaths are only the energy source if they get used up. They don't; like the steel of allomancy, they are simply a catalyst that grants you the Investiture from the Spiritual Realm. Energy is gained, thus end-positive.

 

Just so you know about surging in Feruchemy: the lost power goes into compressing the extra power down into an unnaturally short moment, so it's not "lost". I agree that it doesn't affect Feruchemy's neutrality, but it's a nice tidbit to know.

 

Our disagreement, it would seem: "The Breaths are only the energy source if they get used up".

 

Does the Feruchemist get "used up" when he stores in his metalminds? No, of course he doesn't. Once he stops storing, he goes back to default. Where did that energy come from in the first place, may I ask? Did he have to burn extra calories to make up for all the strength he "lost" while storing in a pewtermind? No. He just has a natural level of "strength", some of which was siphoned off into the metalmind for a time.

 

A feruchemist can store speed or strength or identity or mental speed, all without having lost anything once he stops storing. Nothing is "used up" from the source of the power: the Feruchemist himself. The only thing used up is that power he siphoned off into the metalminds, when he taps. So too with Breath. I would hold that nothing is "used up" when Breaths are invested in an object or person because the Breaths act just like the Feruchemist does in Feruchemy: they are a source of nigh-endlessly replenishing power, but are not themselves (normally) harmed by the extraction and utilization of that power.

 

-Note: a few Feruchemical powers are able to go outside the Feruchemist to get their energy: Feruchemical bendalloy, Feruchemical cadmium, and Feruchemical brass spring to mind. That doesn't affect the point that quite a few of them are entirely internally generated by the Feruchemist himself. Even those three involve their energy-sources being somehow incorporated into the Feruchemist before he can store them.

 

I agree that the energy is from the Spiritual Realm, but not that that means its from Endowment directly, or otherwise sourced externally from the Breaths themselves.

 

Breaths providing power from the Spiritual Realm is the literal definition of end-positivity.

 

No, it is not:

[Allomancy] is end-positive, according to my terminology, meaning that the practitioner draws in power from an external source.

 

I here define invested Breath, while Spiritual in nature, as "internal" to its holder, whereas Preservation or Endowment or the Dor are all external. Sound fair?

 

EDIT 2: Yep, it's fair. "Innate" may be a better term than internal, though.

 

EDIT: Just for fun:

 

Feruchemy is an end-neutral art, meaning that power is neither gained nor lost.

 

So, since Breath (the fundamental source of this power) is neither strengthened nor weakened in its use, +1 for neutrality.

 

---

 

A feruchemist provides his own power by... well okay it varies. You provide strength by burning caloric energy.

 

Not quite. Sazed doesn't store the effort of lifting something or the like: he stores his fundamental attribute of "strength". He taps and gets big muscles, which cost him the same whether he uses them or not. Sitting in a chair with massive muscles and not doing anything does not burn extra caloric energy, and yet is costs the same, magically-speaking, as using those muscles to wrestle a Koloss.

 

Your eyesight is... okay not really technically using energy... okay this is getting messy but the point is, the power comes from your physical body, the physical realm. It can be measured in ways that make sense and are not infinite. The Spiritual Realm is a world made out of power. It does whatever AonDor tells it to. It can be channeled by brass to enflame the emotions of those around you. In the shape of a Shardblade it slices through stone without effort.

 

The above point on Feruchemical pewter applies to this general point as well. Feruchemy is (mostly) all about storing up capabilities and attributes, not actions. fStrength, when you think about it, comes from you but not from your body, if you catch my drift.

 

When the Breaths you hold raise you to Heightenings and provide you with benefits, those are being powered from the Spiritual Realm, too. If you had to provide the power yourself, Susebron would have to eat butter literally every minute of the day to keep ahead of how much energy those Breaths required of him. End-positivity means that Investiture is giving you more power than you started with.

 

Once again, I'm totally on board with the power being fundamentally Spiritual. No need to go around doing weird things like converting calories into Spiritual power ( ).

 

I'm really going to have to ask you to be more specific about "people's souls in the Cosmere provide energy" if you aren't saying that it's direct infusion of power from the Spiritual Realm, because that it what end-positive means. Just because literally everyone on Nalthis has a tiny touch of Endowment, just because it's the norm there, doesn't mean it isn't end-positivity. It just means that in a technical sense, every non-Drab on Nalthis is participating in a very, very little bit of end-positive Investiture.

 

I think our clash may (also) rest on this rather narrow definition of end-positivity. I think BioChroma's use of Breath certainly is a direct infusion from the Spiritual Realm, but in the same sense of the way that Preservation fuels allomancy: the power, once used, returns to the Breath—much like as water, after passing over a turbine, continues on in its system. In this case, then, Endowment has stepped aside and is not providing any "external source" of power. If s/he left Nalthis, I think it almost certain that Awakened constructs would still work as their Breath kept providing them with energy.

 

I've been using a terminology of capital and interest because I think it useful, particularly when discussing the vampiric natures of Returned and Nightblood, but this turbine-metaphor may prove more apt for diffusing our disagreement.

 

Yes, yes, everything about this.

 

My reply:

Fair enough, but could you please explain how Feruchemy isn't end-positive under this definition? How is an Aluminum ferring doing anything but storing and retrieving some aspect of the power generated by their soul?

 

This is a shorter version of my long-form explication of the nature of Feruchemy up above.

Edited November 3, 2013 by Kurkistan

[Bean]

Thanks isomere. Now that I think about it, we see many people covered in moisture. I always thought it was sweat, but now i'm wondering if in the cosmere there is not sweat... only JTSE.   seriously though I did look that up and he does seem unreasonably wet. It makes a pretty specific point of it. Though if he had some coalesced from the spiritual realm or damnation or wherever I'm not sure why he would have had leaves and stuff in his beard.

 

Since this topic has been pretty well derailed, do we have any info on what becomes of metals after they are burned? do they transform inot pure energy? get transferred to the spiritual realm? I would love some WoB on this.

[Kurkistan]

Sorry about the derailment. BioChroma discussions have a tendency to do that. 

 

As for the metal question: Good question. There's a claim floating around that the metals return to the planet somehow, but I've yet to see the source for it. Another pseudo-theory that appeals to me is that the metals aren't destroyed, but instead rendered inert and/or changed somehow, while actually still remaining in the Allomancer's body.