Why do gems shatter?

[JohnnyKaizen he/him]

If this has been asked and answered at some point, please link me, but I didn't find it.

I was thinking today about the toughness vs hardness of gemstones. Gemstones can shatter here on earth, but everything I've read about it comes with several caveats, mostly that those stones need inclusions along which to break.

Is that the case on Roshar? Would a perfect gemstone shatter, ever? I really am talking about soulcasting, as I don't know of another surge that's been described to shatter gems. If no, perfect gemstones won't shatter, does that make them a perfect engine for fabrials? 

If yes, are we talking some massive amount of stormlight transfer, or just the same sort of action like Jasnah displayed in TWoKs when turning the boulder to smoke?

I think the heart of my wondering is, do gems on Roshar split because of inclusions, or some other weakness, or is it simply the forces involved with soulcasting are sometimes too great?

[Quantus he/him]

1 hour ago, JohnnyKaizen said:

If this has been asked and answered at some point, please link me, but I didn't find it.

I was thinking today about the toughness vs hardness of gemstones. Gemstones can shatter here on earth, but everything I've read about it comes with several caveats, mostly that those stones need inclusions along which to break.

Is that the case on Roshar? Would a perfect gemstone shatter, ever? I really am talking about soulcasting, as I don't know of another surge that's been described to shatter gems. If no, perfect gemstones won't shatter, does that make them a perfect engine for fabrials? 

If yes, are we talking some massive amount of stormlight transfer, or just the same sort of action like Jasnah displayed in TWoKs when turning the boulder to smoke?

I think the heart of my wondering is, do gems on Roshar split because of inclusions, or some other weakness, or is it simply the forces involved with soulcasting are sometimes too great?

When Stormlight leaves a gem (via use or leakage) it will cause vibrations in the Gem; this phenomena was exploited to create patterns in the vibrations to make the Gem Archive.  Normal Gem physics would say those repeated stress cycles are what cause the issue, though there's probably also single use stresses that arent purely about cycles.

If physical stress cycles and normal crack propagation are the only factor, then Perfect Gems should only see stress from actual use and not passive leakage, so they should last longer but could still be cracked from over-use, Maybe?  If there's some other factor involved, or if Realmic shenanigans over-shadow the mundane geology mechanisms, then it could go either way.  Perfect Gems can shine forever without loosing Stormlight because the actual Photons are from a leak from the spiritual realm and not the actual Investiture becoming Lightwaves; and if that's the case we cant be sure what other magical weirdness could be involved, up to and including a self-healing ability for Perfect Gems

[Treamayne]

3 hours ago, JohnnyKaizen said:

If this has been asked and answered at some point, please link me, but I didn't find it.

I was thinking today about the toughness vs hardness of gemstones. Gemstones can shatter here on earth, but everything I've read about it comes with several caveats, mostly that those stones need inclusions along which to break.

Is that the case on Roshar? Would a perfect gemstone shatter, ever? I really am talking about soulcasting, as I don't know of another surge that's been described to shatter gems. If no, perfect gemstones won't shatter, does that make them a perfect engine for fabrials? 

If yes, are we talking some massive amount of stormlight transfer, or just the same sort of action like Jasnah displayed in TWoKs when turning the boulder to smoke?

I think the heart of my wondering is, do gems on Roshar split because of inclusions, or some other weakness, or is it simply the forces involved with soulcasting are sometimes too great?

I think a primary cause (if not the primary cause) is best explained in Elantris (Spoilers):

Spoiler

Elantris Ch 22:

Quote

Sighing, Raoden pushed away from the wall, and the stone crumbled beneath his fingers. Startled, he turned and regarded the wall. Kahar had recently cleaned it, and its white marble glistened in the sun—except where Raoden’s fingers had crushed it.

“Stronger than you thought?” Galladon asked with a smirk.

Raoden raised his eyebrows, brushing at the broken stone. It crumbled away. “This marble is softer than soapstone!”

“Elantris,” Galladon said. “Things decay quickly here.”

<snip>

Galladon asked with a shake of his head. “Why destroy the city?”

“Maybe it’s not the Dor,” Raoden said. “Maybe it’s the sudden absence of the Dor. The magic—the Dor—was a part of this city. Every stone burned with its own light. When that power was removed, the city was left hollow. Like the discarded shell of a small rivercrawler that has grown too big for its skin. The stones are empty.”

“How can a stone be empty?” Galladon said skeptically.

Raoden cracked off another piece of marble, crumbling it between his fingers. “Like this, my friend. The rock spent so long infused by the Dor that it was weakened irreparably by the Reod. This city really is a corpse—its spirit has fled.”

 

So, any material (stone, gem, etc.) long infused with investiture will become brittle when that investiture is absent. Drain a Gem too fast and <bam> cracked gemstone. The vibrations @Quantus mentioned would be external force breaking the crystaline structure. . . 

Edited June 11 by Treamayne
SPAG/Clarity

[Quantus he/him]

41 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

I think a primary cause (if not the primary cause) is best explained in Elantris (Spoilers):

  Hide contents

Elantris Ch 22:

 

So, any material (stone, gem, etc.) long infused with investiture will become brittle when that investiture is absent. Drain a Gem too fast and <bam> cracked gemstone. The vibrations @Quantus mentioned would be external force breaking the crystaline structure. . . 

Wait, so you're saying Objects can get drained to something akin a

Spoiler

Lifeless Drab state by the removal of Investiture?  That...has startling implications if it's a common trait for all flavors of investiture.  Fascinating!  As always I have to question whether The Dor is unique in this compared to Lights or Metalminds, etc, being a Cognitive-sourced power instead of a Spiritual Realm one.  Do metalminds have the same issue, I wonder, with the Investiture is captured in the middle of the realmic transition rather than being gathered from something ambient like Lights in the Physical like Lights. Do Objected with significant breaths stored in them degrade over time, like will Vasher's favorite Awakening scarf fray to nothing one day when he moved the breaths to something else?

 

Edited June 11 by Quantus

[Treamayne]

25 minutes ago, Quantus said:

Wait, so you're saying Objects can get drained to something akin: (Warbreaker, Elantris and Mistborn Spoilers)

Spoiler

a Lifeless state by the removal of Investiture?  That...has startling implications if it's a common trait for all flavors of investiture.  Fascinating!  As always I have to question whether The Dor is unique in this compared to Lights or Metalminds, etc, being a Cognitive-sourced power instead of a Spiritual Realm one.  Do metalminds have the same issue, I wonder, with the Investiture is captured in the middle of the realmic transition rather than being gathered from something ambient like Lights in the Physical like Lights. Do Objected with significant breaths stored in them degrade over time, like will Vasher's favorite Awakening scarf fray to nothing one day when he moved the breaths to something else?

 

Edit: Thanks. . .  (Warbreaker, Elantris and Mistborn Spoilers)

Spoiler

I would not call it similar to a Lifeless State - that's a living being whose body is no longer connected to it's Spiritweb (soul?), and has a fake soul (Spiritweb) created for it through Awakening. I think this is more like derated materials and physical fatigue of objects. There was so much Dor in the Stones and materials of Elantris that they glowed from the amount of Dor. Likewise, Gemstones contain so much Stormlight that they glow. (Metalminds, not so much, but Scadrial is a low-investiture world). It makes sense that something so Invested for a long time would suffer physical degradation once that support is lost (kind of like non-vacuum rated materials used in Satellites degrading much faster than normal). Especially when the investiture is lost rapidly though stressing activities (like Soulcasting).

I'll check tonight (if I rememeber) but I think I recall that old Spheres can also crack if they have undergone to many charging/dun cycles (WoK maybe).

They wear out. 

Edit: Raoden's comment about "It's Spirit has Fled" was a hold-over hyperbolic joke reference from the original Title for Elantris. Annotations to Ch 22:

Spoiler

Some people have noted to me that it seems strange to them that Elantris only fell ten years before the start of the book. It seems to them that the legends make it seem older, more removed. This is actually intentional. I wanted it to be difficult to remember, at times, that it has only been ten years since the majestic city fell.

Just like Elantris is crumbling far more quickly than should have been possible, it is passing into legend far faster than people might have thought. Part of this is due to the power of rumors and stories in a land without the ability to provide archival visual records (i.e., film.) Part of it, however, is the Elantris ‘mystery.’ Something very bad happened, and nobody understands it. In a way, the entire country has been left with a hole inside of its soul, now that Elantris is gone.

• Spoilers
  • By the way. Yes, the line ‘Its sprit has fled’ was intended as another little pun off of the then title of the book: ‘THE SPIRIT OF ELANTRIS’

 

 

Edited June 11 by Treamayne
Clarity/SPAG

[Quantus he/him]

1 minute ago, Treamayne said:

Please don't forget to spoiler tag non SA material in the SA Forums. (Warbreaker, Elantris and Mistborn Spoilers)

  Hide contents

I would not call it similar to a Lifeless State - that's a living being whose body is no longer connected to it's Spiritweb (soul?), and has a fake soul (Spiritweb) created for it through Awakening. I think this is more like derated materials and physical fatigue of objects. There was so much Dor in the Stones and materials of Elantris that they glowed from the amount of Dor. Likewise, Gemstones contain so much Stormlight that they glow. (Metalminds, not so much, but Scadrial is a low-investiture world). It makes sense that something so Invested for a long time would suffer physical degradation once that support is lost (kind of like non-vacuum rated materials used in Satellites degrading much faster than normal). Especially when the investiture is lost rapidly though stressing activities (like Soulcasting).

I'll check tonight (if I rememeber) but I think I recall that old Spheres can also crack if they have undergone to many charging/dun cycles (WoK maybe).

They wear out. 

 

Fixed, and sorry I meant

Spoiler

Drab, not Lifeless.  As in an object that ends up with Less Investiture than it's native amount because some of it stuck to the "Foreign" Investiture when it was removed. It's not quite the same situation but close in the context of the reduction. 

 

[Treamayne]

3 minutes ago, Quantus said:

Fixed, and sorry I meant

Spoiler

Drab, not Lifeless.  As in an object that ends up with Less Investiture than it's native amount because some of it stuck to the "Foreign" Investiture when it was removed. It's not quite the same situation but close in the context of the reduction.

 

I could see that being very similar or related. Especially in context of this Annotation (Warbreaker Spoilers):

Spoiler

Annotations to Warbreaker Ch 41:

Quote

Vivenna, Sick and Her Mind Cloudy,
Gets Turned Away by the Restaurant Keeper

One of the ways I decided to make Vivenna’s sections here work better was by enhancing the fuzziness of her mind. By giving her this sense of numbness, I hope to indicate that something is not right with her.

It’s common for someone who suddenly becomes a Drab to get sick almost immediately. For a time, her immune system was magically enhanced and warded, in a way, to keep her from becoming ill. With that removed suddenly, sickness can strike. She hasn’t built up immunities to the sicknesses going around, and by becoming a Drab, her immune system suddenly works far worse than that of other people.

These things combined made her come down with something pretty nasty the very day she put away her Breath. This would have killed her, eventually, if she hadn’t done something about it. She would have grown so dizzy and confused that she wouldn’t have even been able to walk.

By sending men to find her, Denth saved her life.

 

 

[alder24]

7 hours ago, JohnnyKaizen said:

If this has been asked and answered at some point, please link me, but I didn't find it.

I was thinking today about the toughness vs hardness of gemstones. Gemstones can shatter here on earth, but everything I've read about it comes with several caveats, mostly that those stones need inclusions along which to break.

Is that the case on Roshar? Would a perfect gemstone shatter, ever? I really am talking about soulcasting, as I don't know of another surge that's been described to shatter gems. If no, perfect gemstones won't shatter, does that make them a perfect engine for fabrials? 

If yes, are we talking some massive amount of stormlight transfer, or just the same sort of action like Jasnah displayed in TWoKs when turning the boulder to smoke?

I think the heart of my wondering is, do gems on Roshar split because of inclusions, or some other weakness, or is it simply the forces involved with soulcasting are sometimes too great?

Here is a WoB on why gems crack:

Spoiler

Hut on a Hill

One last question, why do gems crack when Stormlight is drawn out of them quickly?

Brandon Sanderson

When the Stormlight is coming out--you'll notice that there's the slightest physical presence of lots of spren, seons. A lot of this Investiture does have a physical side to it you can feel and that much Stormlight coming through... like when it's leaking out, it is generally going through micro cracks in the structure--where the crystal lattice didn't line up or flaws in the structure--and it coming out quickly like that, it's like hitting it with a hammer from inside along those fault lines. Much less likely to happen based on how good your gemstone is.

YouTube Live Fan Mail Opening 1 (Oct. 30, 2021)

Because perfect gems have no flaws at all, they shouldn't crack when Stormlight is drawn out of them, or at least they have drastically lower chances of cracking.

[JohnnyKaizen he/him]

23 hours ago, Treamayne said:

I think a primary cause (if not the primary cause) is best explained in Elantris (Spoilers):

  Hide contents

Elantris Ch 22:

 

So, any material (stone, gem, etc.) long infused with investiture will become brittle when that investiture is absent. Drain a Gem too fast and <bam> cracked gemstone. The vibrations @Quantus mentioned would be external force breaking the crystaline structure. . . 

Ok, Im a big fan of that In-Cosmere logic. I never would have connected that to this thread even though I've read Elantris 4+ times. That makes very good sense to me.

Edit:

@alder24 per usual, I fired off a response to something that resonated without being patient enough to read to the bottom of the thread. Ooops, anyway this:

'Because perfect gems have no flaws at all, they shouldn't crack when Stormlight is drawn out of them, or at least they have drastically lower chances of cracking" is exactly what I was wondering. Even if it's technically possible to crack a perfect gemstone, it's at the very least far less likely than a stone with inclusions. Between you and @Treamayne, Im feeling like all the bases are covered.

 

Edited June 12 by JohnnyKaizen