Let's make some unimportant Scadrian Worldbuilding headcanons!

[KaladinWorldsinger]

Let's make some headcanons that will probably never ever appear in the books. No limitations on the future

 

The 'Einstein' of Scadrial is going to be a coinshot who was falling and realised the principle of relativity as he was falling.

Scadrial has no third law of motion because 'every action has an equal and opposite reaction' is old news to this culture

 

[Frustration]

There's some force draining the brainpower from the entire population, because no planet can possibly be this dumb.

The Shard has had models for perpetual motion machines using the metalic arts for years, and we don't even live in the world. I refuse to belive that none of them have possibly figure this out.

[IlstrawberrySeed]

@Frustration what?

[Frustration]

8 minutes ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

@Frustration what?

What are the models?

Or do I need to explain myself differently?

[IlstrawberrySeed]

What are the models, my bad.

Edited January 10, 2023 by IlstrawberrySeed

[Frustration]

1 minute ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

What are the models, my bad.

Put an iron ferring on a piston and have them tap and store weight as needed to make the piston move.

[alder24]

16 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Put an iron ferring on a piston and have them tap and store weight as needed to make the piston move.

That's slavery!  and you still need to feed him, so he still requires some energy. To make it move effectively, without being slowed down by friction, he would need to take more weight than he puts it in. He will be losing more weight then he puts in. And it needs to be human size, lots of friction there.

Edited January 10, 2023 by alder24

[Frustration]

Just now, alder24 said:

That's slavery!  and you still need to feed him, so he still requires some energy.

Well, he needed that energy anyway, except now you get the energy needed to power a city.

1 minute ago, alder24 said:

To make it move effectively, without being slowed down by friction, he would need to take more weight than he puts it in.

Could you say that again?

1 minute ago, alder24 said:

And it needs to be human size, lots of friction there.

It's not the most efficient thing in the world, but it's unbelievably cheep.

[IlstrawberrySeed]

It's also not perpetual motion, just spontaneous generation of power.

[alder24]

2 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Could you say that again?

It's not the most efficient thing in the world, but it's unbelievably cheep.

I don't know, I try. When you make it human size, it generates a lot of friction. Iron ferring would have to tap much more atribute. like 5x his weight, to move it down to generate productive amount of energy. Then he decrease his weight and he puts less of it than he pulled from it. He would lose his attribute faster than he's gaining it. So he will run out of attribute.

If he just makes himself 1.5x heavier for 1 min, to move it down, then 0.5x lighter to move it up for 1 min, so he doesn't lose attribute, then he would just move so slow that it would not provide anything useful. No usable power.

[Frustration]

1 minute ago, alder24 said:

I don't know, I try. When you make it human size, it generates a lot of friction. Iron ferring would have to tap much more atribute. like 5x his weight, to move it down to generate productive amount of energy. Then he decrease his weight and he puts less of it than he pulled from it. He would lose his attribute faster than he's gaining it. So he will run out of attribute.

If he just makes himself 1.5x heavier for 1 min, to move it down, then 0.5x lighter to move it up for 1 min, so he doesn't lose attribute, then he would just move so slow that it would not provide anything useful. No usable power.

You can solve that by having multiple ferrings who store weight whenever they aren't on shift.

And as technology progresses you can improve the system more.

[alder24]

2 minutes ago, Frustration said:

You can solve that by having multiple ferrings who store weight whenever they aren't on shift.

That would work. But still you wouldn't get much power from it. It's just easier to burn coal for electricity, than this. 

[Frustration]

Just now, alder24 said:

That would work. But still you wouldn't get much power from it. It's just easier to burn coal for electricity, than this. 

There isn't any coal on Scadrial, it's too new of a planet.

[alder24]

Just now, Frustration said:

There isn't any coal on Scadrial, it's too new of a planet.

So oil from plants or whatever they use. You won't power a city with your thing.

[IlstrawberrySeed]

You could if it was a compounding savant that could make oneself incredibly light, or if there were 2 ferrings on opposite sides of the piston, or even multiple on the same side to enact greater differentials. Additionally, there doesn't need to be huge friction because it can be somewhat small due to ropes and harnesses. Of course, at that point you deal with air resistance, but low pressure high ox could deal with that.

[Frustration]

7 minutes ago, alder24 said:

So oil from plants or whatever they use. You won't power a city with your thing.

You really could.

Assuming you have 30 individuals who each weigh 120 pounds, and you have them work in 8 hour shifts: They each have 10 days between each shift. Assuming they store 75% of their weight during that time, and are awake for fourteen hours a day they can each spend 12,600 hours weighing 230 pounds, or eight hours weighing 141,750 pounds. Not counting the diminishing returns, or the amount saved by storing to make the piston return to original position.

[IlstrawberrySeed]

Diminishing returns really would cut that to pieces. However, it is still probably heavy enough to make it work for half an octant, if not more. Honestly, a compounder would work well though, and earn good money.

Edited January 10, 2023 by IlstrawberrySeed

[Wittles he/him]

This is somewhat plausible, but maybe not in that specific way

[cometaryorbit]

5 hours ago, Frustration said:

There isn't any coal on Scadrial, it's too new of a planet.

Yes there is. It's referenced at least twice in Era 1 (somebody has a coal stove, and Spook talks about coal miners complaining in Urteau in HoA).

Presumably Leras and Ati just made coal deposits when they created the planet. No reason why they wouldn't, IMO. A lot of things about a habitable planet take geological time to develop the natural way - it's likely that they copied a natural planet (assuming there are any in the Cosmere).

Feruchemy powered machines (though likely with mechanical Feruchemy based on Medallion tech) seem quite likely in the future. It might even be occurring, but not yet publicized. But I think large scale power distribution is very very new for them. They're pretty new to electricity, Wax doesn't know what a radio is in BoM.

They also might genuinely miss things that seem "obvious" to us. Their scientific community is likely pretty limited due to their very small population. There's probably just a couple universities in the world - it will be far easier for habits of thought to get locked in and not challenged, especially in a culture as hidebound as Elendel seems to be (lack of exploration is notable).

Edited January 11, 2023 by cometaryorbit

[+robardin he/him]

Headcanon that will never be challenged, and has no basis in anything:

Chouta was actually created on Roshar by Felt, the Scadrian worldhopper, who missed the "baywraps" with a vegetable and barley filling we see in TFE. He tried making a version with local ingredients, and eventually settled on spiced soulcast meat mixed with lavis as the closest thing. He stewed and steamed them like baywrap fillings were, but a cousin of Lopen's modified it with deep frying, and the rest is history (and has now come back to Scadrial that way in Era 2)!

 

[Frustration]

12 hours ago, cometaryorbit said:

Yes there is. It's referenced at least twice in Era 1 (somebody has a coal stove, and Spook talks about coal miners complaining in Urteau in HoA).

Coal stoves could just be the name for it.

And the mines in Urteau were for metal, that's why there was a cache there.

[alder24]

27 minutes ago, Frustration said:

Coal stoves could just be the name for it.

You know charcoal exists?

[Frustration]

10 minutes ago, alder24 said:

You know charcoal exists?

Yes, I am aware of charcoal.

[The Subsumer he/him]

Idea for that Skimmer powered generator: a Terris wheel (haha get it, because Terris?). You've got a series of skimmers standing on an upright wheel with platforms that swing so they can always be able to be stood upon. Timing carefully, the Skimmer at the top right position increases his weight as the other two decrease, swinging the wheel clockwise. As he reaches the bottom he starts storing weight and the Skimmer now in his position starts to tap his metalminds. Dizzying and overcomplicated? Yes. Effective? Also yes.

Also I've mentioned this before but a Lurcher Cannon- a sort of tube with different metal rings in a column that a lurcher can stand in, and by pulling hard on the sides of the cylinder they can launch themselves up, up and away. 

Eventually when they have computers, they should be able to make a speed bubble around the cpu's for basically instant processing speed. This would have the negative side effect of, you know, causing the Slider to age faster than everyone else... But sacrifices must be made.

[IlstrawberrySeed]

Aou could have a cadmium misting stand next to them to bring them down to speed...