Slow fall via abrasion?

[Tamriel Wolfsbaine]

I am a huge fan of the slow fall imagery of F iron but I don't enjoy flying mechanics. I am trying to think of other slow fall mechanic possibilities and was curious of you think it would be possible for an edgedancer or dustbringer to use abrasion to increase the friction on their skin or clothes enough to cause a slow fall sort of effect. 

Perhaps it would be painful?  But they have stormlight to autoheal through any real damage.  

In the same realm... can they reduce the friction to almost nothing... could you make enough of an impact with no friction possible to die from a fall or could they hit the ground and slide away slowly letting up and slowing themselves down? 

[Trusk'our he/him]

33 minutes ago, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

I am a huge fan of the slow fall imagery of F iron but I don't enjoy flying mechanics. I am trying to think of other slow fall mechanic possibilities and was curious of you think it would be possible for an edgedancer or dustbringer to use abrasion to increase the friction on their skin or clothes enough to cause a slow fall sort of effect. 

Seems plausible to me. Depends on some factors I would assume, but it doesn't seem unreasonable. 

[Dreamwa1ker she/her]

I think high friction would make you super hot like a spacecraft re-entering the atmosphere. But if you had Shardplate to protect you I bet it would work. You could hit as a big fireball/meteor too which would be storming awesome.

Edited April 12, 2024 by Dreamwa1ker

[AltonicKeys he/him]

I guess the only thing you can apply abrasion to while falling would be air, but I don't think it would actually slow your fall? Same way a mirror-polished cannonball wouldn't be faster than a normal cannonball. That's more air resistance stuff, so unless you could become a shape that restricts airflow, you'd just be falling normally. unless the magic system is magic.

[Duxredux he/him]

On 4/10/2024 at 11:37 AM, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

I am a huge fan of the slow fall imagery of F iron but I don't enjoy flying mechanics. I am trying to think of other slow fall mechanic possibilities and was curious of you think it would be possible for an edgedancer or dustbringer to use abrasion to increase the friction on their skin or clothes enough to cause a slow fall sort of effect. 

Perhaps it would be painful?  But they have stormlight to autoheal through any real damage.  

I had to go look this up to make sure I was remembering properly, but friction on the molecular level is caused by ridges and valleys in even seemingly smooth materials meeting and basically cold welding themselves together due to pressure with the resistive force we think of as friction the force needed to break those temporary welds. Increasing the force needed to break those welds is going to look a lot like Adhesion, so I'm not sure where that line is drawn, but it probably doesn't overlap too much. Coating yourself in and adhesive-like Abrasion coating would only make the first layer of air molecules stick to you and then the rest will act exactly as if you were falling normally since many don't actually contact you directly, they are deflected in varying shells from the moving object (I think, this may be a gross simplification of the field of fluid dynamics). Basically, don't expect it to slow you down significantly when passing through a fluid, displacement causes way more resistance.

On 4/10/2024 at 11:37 AM, Tamriel Wolfsbaine said:

In the same realm... can they reduce the friction to almost nothing... could you make enough of an impact with no friction possible to die from a fall or could they hit the ground and slide away slowly letting up and slowing themselves down? 

So... it depends. The geometry of the shape they land on determines the angle of the normal force exerted on the falling person. Were they diving to minimize air resistance or intentionally slowing themselves down with proper skydiving techniques? Being frictionless won't save you if you hit a flat, level slab of rock, though Stormlight probably will. The deformation of the object they hit, what position they hit (feet first so their legs act as the crumple zone of a car vs head first) and so on. Add in planetary gravity and we have a lot of parameters to fill in before we could start crunching numbers. That said, all Abrasion does is simplify most physics problems that early students are told to do anyway, "assume a frictionless environment".