When a Misting tries to burn the wrong metal

[Kurkistan he/him]

Thanks for the facts, Shardlet.

 

On that note, besides the fact that I like to claim the Forms are involved in everything, I think they might actually not be this time around. Brandon talks about "chemical signatures" and whatnot, not the kind of thing you really go about forming cultural abstractions about, so I don't think metal-purity is Formic in nature.

[Mailliw73 he/him]

I'd hope it wasn't Formic, we wouldn't want to mix our authors up.

Edit: What, did no one get that reference?

Edited December 5, 2013 by Mailliw73

[WeiryWriter he/him]

I'd hope it wasn't Formic, we wouldn't want to mix our authors up.

Edit: What, did no one get that reference?

 

The Enderverse?

[Mailliw73 he/him]

Yeah, that's it. That's just what I thought when I saw Formic. Sorry, Kurk

Edited December 5, 2013 by Mailliw73

[name_here]

Apparently mildly impure metals just don't work quite as well, so they don't need absolutely pure elemental metals, which is good because getting something 100% pure is basically impossible. The university I'm at is presently running a xenon purifying operation so radioactive krypton won't throw off the readings from the dark matter detector, because even noble gases have impurities in commercial use.

 

Probably wrought iron is on the outer bounds of safe for iron burning, since people often gather metals by scraping objects but suppliers of high-purity metals stay in business. Alloys might be a bit looser, since Vin got sickened by numerous incorrect aluminum alloys that apparently did not contain noticeable levels of copper. Or it could be that being able to attempt to burn a metal is based more on physical properties than on exact composition.

[Oudeis he/him]

I suspect their knowledge of the perfect alloy is based on "best guess". There's a relatively easily-established range within which "this won't make me sick" and then they try to narrow it down further to "this is the exact right mix to maximize power" and get as close as they can. If you're off by a tiny fraction (I don't personally know enough metallurgy to know what they'd consider a tiny fraction to be) it still works and is just about as effective as the ephemeral "ideal" which is as difficult to get as a pure element.

 

Just one man's opinion.

[Swimmingly he/him]

Thanks for the facts, Shardlet.

On that note, besides the fact that I like to claim the Forms are involved in everything, I think they might actually not be this time around. Brandon talks about "chemical signatures" and whatnot, not the kind of thing you really go about forming cultural abstractions about, so I don't think metal-purity is Formic in nature.

Oh my. Oh myohmyohmy. Kurk, you just said something magical wasn't related to forms. Kurk, buddy, are you OK? Do you want a drink? I'll use the collective unconscious of sentient species everywhere to envision it into existence, you just sit tight. Here you go, Kurk. Careful of the spren, now.

[Kurkistan he/him]

Ha. Ha. 

[Shardlet he/him]

Apparently mildly impure metals just don't work quite as well, so they don't need absolutely pure elemental metals, which is good because getting something 100% pure is basically impossible. The university I'm at is presently running a xenon purifying operation so radioactive krypton won't throw off the readings from the dark matter detector, because even noble gases have impurities in commercial use.

 

Definitely, I 'd guess that in most cases better than 2 nines (+99%) is functionally pure for allomancy. Maybe 3 nines (99.9%).  4 and 5 nines takes some significant processing to achieve.