Chromium and Nicrosil - practical limitations

[killersquirrel59 he/him]

I was doing some vague research into Chromium and think I found a slight hiccup. Quite simply, it could never exist for Allomantic purposes in the Final Empire and would be highly unlikely to exist in the Alloy of Law setting.

 

Quite simply Chromium refining requires technology that would be rather difficult if not impossible to recreate in the setting. Allomancy requires that base metals be pure and that alloys be precise in their percentages. Well, pure Chromium requires furnace technology far more advanced than what was displayed at this equivalent technological level. Chromium cannot be extracted in its pure form below 2080^o C (3776^o F). The height of medieval metallurgical technology produced furnaces that could reach 1300^o C. Even by the age of Enlightenment the best that could be managed was around 1600-1700^o C. Ordinary forge technology just cannot produce those temperatures. 

 

It wasn't until the late 1890s that a process was developed to extract carbon-free Chromium, and that process was thermite (thermite was patented in 1893 and first used commercially in 1899). Now Chromium was used before this time, but not in its pure form, which would be required for Allomancy.

 

Now Chromium does exist in its native form naturally, but is extremely rare and usually only found in volcanoes. It is not mined in this form.

 

While I suppose thermite could exist in the Alloy of Law setting, based on other existing technology (railways, steam ships, ect.) if we assume similar technological progress to our own, it seems unlikely. Now the existence of Allomancy and Feruchemy would likely mean that the fields related to Metallurgy would be slightly more advanced than ours as there would be a greater demand, but even if thermite does exist in the Alloy of Law setting, it would have to be a very new invention. 

 

Nicrosil is far worse, being an entirely artificial alloy requiring very precise percentages of tricky metals (84.1% Nickel, 14.4% Chromium, 1.4% Silicon, 0.1% Magnesium). This simply could not be manufactured with the kind of technology available in the Alloy of Law setting, let alone the medieval technology of the Final Empire.

 

Thoughts? Comments? Snide remarks?

 

 

[Voidus]

I don't believe that it does exist in either AoL or the original trilogy, the only allomancer we know who uses either is a Nicrosil misting in the 2nd trilogy.

[killersquirrel59 he/him]

This is something of a change of opinion for me as I had previously been in the camp thinking that Chromium and Nicrosil were extant in AoL, possibly even in the Elendel basin and just not mentioned in that rather short book. This makes a big difference though.

[Voidus]

I do find it unlikely that they'd be able to use thermite either, which to my knowledge requires Aluminium or Aluminium oxides to create, and it's still sufficiently rare in AoL that I doubt they'd be playing around with it that freely.

[Observer]

Spook had a little help from Harmony figuring out what the last two metals were, and it isn't completely impossible for them to have figured out Chromium and Nicrosil without actually creating any. An impure metal can be burned at great personal risk, and I could see somebody getting an effect out of it that way just to prove that it'd work. Considering Spook's resources, AoL-era Scadrial probably knows about the two metals and has a rough idea of how to make them, but the two aren't really used by anybody due to the impracticality of attempting to manufacture it.

[Paragrin she/her]

Thermite is rust mixed with aluminum dust, so, yeah, not likely to be stumbled on when aluminum is that valuable.

[Moogle]

Scadrial is more advanced metallurgically (is that the word?) than it might appear. The tech in AoL is not entirely 1930s or whatever it seems like.

 

But yeah, I agree, they may not have even discovered the techniques to manufacture the last two metals by that point in time.

 

WoB:

Brandon Sanderson

This really interested me, because I'd just never seen it done quite the way I wanted to do it. And that's often where my books come from—I find a place where the genre maybe hasn't been explored fully, and I get really excited. And so I pitched my editor a series where the first trilogy is an epic fantasy series, and then years later an urban fantasy series, and then years after that a science fiction series, all set in the same world. And the magic exists all through, and it is treated differently in each of these time periods. And that's what Alloy of Law is: looking at the Mistborn world, hundreds of years later, where society has been rebuilt following the events of the third book.

The analogous time period in our world [for Alloy of Law's setting] would be about 1910, but that's not really very accurate, because in the Mistborn world there are certain things they're much better at—metallurgy, for one, obviously—but they're very poor with communication, because everyone's very concentrated in one area, so long-distance communication is just not one of the things that's very important to them. So it's not a one-to-one correlation. But electricity is starting to be installed in homes, and steam power is used quite extensively.

(source)

Edited August 28, 2014 by Moogle

[Kurkistan he/him]

The public does know about them in the AoL era, by the way.

[Voidus]

I knew there was some quote tucked away somewhere on this, thanks Kurk.

[killersquirrel59 he/him]

That actually makes a lot of sense now. They know about the existence of these metals from the Words of Founding, but have no real way to make them, at least not reliably, and so they are relegated to a similar place in society as theoretical physics. 

[Kurkistan he/him]

@Voidus

 

No problem, that one took me a while to hunt down a few weeks ago.

 

@killersquirrel

 

That is not what the WoB says... It's rather understood there that the metals have been used Feruchemically/Allomantically at some point.

[killersquirrel59 he/him]

WoB from the post above.

Yes, though they are like this world's version of advanced physics in our world. They've heard of them, but many an average person might be hard-pressed to say exactly what they do.

 

How is this not what I said?

[Kurkistan he/him]

I read you as saying that no one, flat out, has this knowledge of how those two metals work, and that no one can hope to acquire it. Versus the world of advanced physics where all the knowledge is out there already and there are several experts in the field.

 

The WoB tells us that they know about both the existence and (to some extent) magical functions of these metals, not just their bare existence as possibilities that do who-knows-what.

 

EDIT; Looking again, I can see how you might have been emphasizing the "place in society" aspect of it. Like how we know what antimatter does and can conceive of a lot of uses for it, but without the ability to generate or store meaningful amounts it doesn't affect anyone's life. Is this what you were getting at?

Edited August 28, 2014 by Kurkistan

[killersquirrel59 he/him]

Yes. I was emphasizing the place in society bit. I interpreted that quote as saying that Chromium and Nicrosil Allomancy is roughly equivalent to how most people see String Theory. Quite a few people know that it exists. But very few people can actually really say what it is with any clarity, and even the experts in the field can't really prove much. But the math checks out.

 

(And yes, I know that String Theory has all but been disproven recently, but the analogy is too good to waste. Take the analogy for what it is before that happened.)

[Kurkistan he/him]

Ah, my mistake then.

[Shadowspren he/him]

I'm not sure if this has already been said or not, but seeing how Scadrians have more of a day-to-day use of all these metals might have meant that they had more of a cause to research and develop faster than we did in the real world. Also I think that they would have almost certainly had help from Harmony.

[killersquirrel59 he/him]

That was noted. It would make sense (and was confirmed by Brandon at least vaguely) that the Scadrians' understanding of Metallurgy is greater than what ours was at the equivalent technology level, simply because of greater demand. However thermite is still extremely unlikely since it requires active consumption of aluminum, and easy production of aluminum requires electricity which is noted as still being a rare and expensive novelty in Alloy of Law.

[happyman he/him]

I think that the quote from Brandon makes it pretty clear how things stand.

 

I would use the anti-matter analogy rather than string theory.  Physicists who weren't in the field, and even some who were, have been skeptical of string theory for some time.  Anti-matter, on the other hand, is well established as existing, but it's wildly impractical to make in any quantity.  I suspect that in AoL, they have made a little bit of Chromium, but that the techniques were expensive, technical and not worth scaling up.  That way, they know what it does, confirmed the theory, but can't do much about it yet.

[killersquirrel59 he/him]

The anti-matter doesn't work. It's not that Chromium is rare and expensive to produce, or even impractical. It's physically impossible unless you accept that they have Thermite. Otherwise they simply cannot reach the temperatures needed to refine pure Chromium that is needed for Allomancy. The String Theory analogy works because they understand how Chromium SHOULD work, but simply can't physically prove it yet.

[happyman he/him]

The anti-matter doesn't work. It's not that Chromium is rare and expensive to produce, or even impractical. It's physically impossible unless you accept that they have Thermite. Otherwise they simply cannot reach the temperatures needed to refine pure Chromium that is needed for Allomancy. The String Theory analogy works because they understand how Chromium SHOULD work, but simply can't physically prove it yet.

 

The Higgs boson is probably the best analogy, then.  Even if we had found super-symmetry at the LHC, that wouldn't have proven String Theory. 

[killersquirrel59 he/him]

The Higgs boson is probably the best analogy, then.  Even if we had found super-symmetry at the LHC, that wouldn't have proven String Theory. 

Give this one a cookie. That's what I was searching for. That's the analogy that works best. All the math checks out and there is some initial supporting practical evidence, but it certainly isn't being used in any kind of widespread application yet.

[Kadrok she/her]

So they might not have the Thermite to create the heat needed to make those metals like we do, but you know what they do have? Brass-compounders.

Perhaps they make Chromium and Nicrosil with Brass-compounders.

Edited September 9, 2014 by Kadrok

[killersquirrel59 he/him]

Feruchemical brass, like all Feruchemy is internal only. It can only affect the heat of one's own body. 

 

Even if we accept the idea of a human body heated to 2080 degrees Celsius and thus somehow refine Chromium I guess by holding it in their clenched fist, can you imagine the effect of this on their surroundings? And that's not to mention that kind of heat in a localized area affecting weather patterns? It would be absolutely disastrous. They have no way to contain that kind of heat. It would be ridiculously impractical. 

 

That said, I'm willing to bet someone tried it once, then was tried and either jailed or executed for burning down half of Elendel.

[killersquirrel59 he/him]

Also, we've never seen Feruchemical brass used for anything beyond minor enough changes to cope with climate. It mentions nothing about hardening  your body to withstand extreme internal temperatures. Unless this person could also compound Gold (so 2 Hemalurgic spikes needed), he would likely have crumbled to ash before he ever reached that temperature.

[Kadrok she/her]

Feruchemical brass, like all Feruchemy is internal only. It can only affect the heat of one's own body.

Chromium and Duralumin have effects on your surroundings even though the change is in you. So does Iron for that matter. For the same reason that a Skimmer standing on scales would see their measured weight change, so too would a Firesoul heat up their surroundings. Heat balances out; if I heat up in cooler water, the water becomes hotter.

As for them burning up, there's an 'immune to the effects of your own powers' WoB floating around somewhere, and I'm betting Kurk knows where. If not, I'll edit it in later tonight when I'm on a computer.

 

EDIT: (Thanks Kurk)

http://www.theoryland.com/intvmain.php?i=977#30

Thoughtful Spurts

If tapping heat means your own body gets hotter, does it also mean you become immune to hot temperatures so long as you're tapping it, or should you fill heat and grow colder for that to happen?

Brandon Sanderson

As everything in Feruchemy, you become immune to the effects of the ability only. Like weight doesn't crush you, but at the same time doesn't have a net gain in strength. Growing colder, however, would be more helpful in this regard.

 

Even if we accept the idea of a human body heated to 2080 degrees Celsius and thus somehow refine Chromium I guess by holding it in their clenched fist, can you imagine the effect of this on their surroundings? And that's not to mention that kind of heat in a localized area affecting weather patterns? It would be absolutely disastrous. They have no way to contain that kind of heat. It would be ridiculously impractical.

Except we refine Chromium in real life, apparently with Thermite (not a metallurgist, just going by what has been said)... so how do we contain the heat in real life, and why can't similar methods be applied by Scadrians to a Brass furnace?

Edited September 10, 2014 by Kadrok