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Steel and Iron: We've been thinking about it wrong


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  • 5 weeks later...

I don't think there are really weird Realmatic things going on with the Physical Metals. I think that the discrepancies are because the force exerted varies based on anchor quality as well as Allomantic strength and distance.

 

When an Allomancer Pushes a coin and the coin hits a wall, and then the Allomancer gets pushed backwards, the force has suddenly increased because coin+wall is a better anchor than the coin by itself. There's no violation of Newton's 3rd Law involved, simply an increase in "leverage" that allows the force applied to increase (dramatically).


It seems like there is something limiting the amount of force applied to small, fast-moving objects ... coins really don't seem to move at hypersonic speeds or anything, even when pushed by Elend. But a normal strength Coinshot can hurl themselves through the air at significant speed.

 

The Elend vs Inquisitor bit is odder, but it may simply be an anchoring issue. (Either Allomantic anchors on the battlefield, or just a matter of stance/bracing/friction with the ground). The Inquisitor knows how strong non-Inquisitor Allomancers can be (there's a range of strength yeah, but it seems pretty narrow) and is braced for that - but not for Elend's vastly greater strength. Whereas Elend knows how strong he is and is braced better. The important factor may be that the Inquisitor was taken by surprise rather than simply overwhelmed by greater strength.

 

For Vin with mist-burning vs TLR, I don't think the issue is really in play, because Vin isn't pushing against TLR's full mass, just the little bit of flesh that the bracer pins have to go through to exit. The need for extreme strength there is to overcome Investiture interference, not mass/force issues.

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On 5/11/2019 at 3:36 AM, Artemos said:

 

  1. Burning steel gives the Allomancer the literal power of Preservation, that is, the ability to add (kinetic) energy to a system over time.
  2. Following conservation of energy and momentum, this kinetic energy results in an increase in velocities between the Allomancer and target, depending on their masses.

Unfortunately, you can slow yourself down with allomancy. That removes energy. And the rules for pushing and pulling do not care whether you accelerate or decelerate.

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