Storing weight (feruchemy) & Bouyant forces

[natc]

. . . atmospheric pressure against you should logically remain identical to before right?

[Oversleep]

Well has anyone considered then that if you take all aspects of internal weight and the metalmind out of the question as pathfinder mentioned, that you could potentially float if not rise in the atmosphere.

Would there be side effects though? Considering that you weigh nothing, but the air is treating you like vacuum density? Wouldn't that crush you?

The fact remains that weight change without a change in density is so complex! The only thing I can begin to imagine is that maybe you wouldn't float because the weight of the atmosphere pressing against you would hold you down? Idk anymore

 

... wait, what?

First, as natc said, atmospheric pressure remains the same.

Do you know what buoyant force is? The difference between atmosferic pressure holding you down and atmosferic pressure pushing you up. Since the lower the greater the pressure is, the atmosferic pressure pushing you up is greater than the one pushing you down. That difference is known as buoyant force.

 

I think you should read this.

Edited February 16, 2016 by Oversleep

[Voidus]

Well has anyone considered then that if you take all aspects of internal weight and the metalmind out of the question as pathfinder mentioned, that you could potentially float if not rise in the atmosphere.

Would there be side effects though? Considering that you weigh nothing, but the air is treating you like vacuum density? Wouldn't that crush you?

The fact remains that weight change without a change in density is so complex! The only thing I can begin to imagine is that maybe you wouldn't float because the weight of the atmosphere pressing against you would hold you down? Idk anymore

It's treating you like that but you retain the density you always had which is enough to not be crushed by air pressure.

As mentioned the difference between the atmospheric pressures at varying heights is what causes buoyancy.

[DocHoliday he/him]

....does Filling an Ironmind include the weight of whatever clothes, guns, even the metal mind itself?

Because I seem to recall Sazed mentioning in WoA during his travels with Marsh, how the Iron around his ankles was now the heaviest thing on him.

So even if said level of Storage is possible; Wax would have to be butt naked for it to work.

[Three1415]

As pointed out by others, the magnitude of the buoyant force does not by itself have anything to do with one's density. However, the magnitude of one's weight does, and since this is the force buoyancy is opposing, one only floats if one's density is less than that of material one is in.

 

Another thing: I don't know what Brandon has said about this, but the concept of altering mass while leaving density unchanged makes zero sense unless one is growing or shrinking to compensate. That's like saying I can remove thermal energy from something without cooling it down, or fill a cup without raising the water level inside.

 

Now, as Brandon is a writer, not a physicist, I don't blame him for not really having this thoroughly or consistently laid out, but as of now the exact effects of Feruchemical Iron change more or less according to the situation Wax is in, with numerous contradictions between chapters and between books. As such, it is probably impossible to develop a coherent mechanism for iron that fits all written material, because one just doesn't exist. That being said, however, there are two possibilities for iron's operation:

 

1: Iron stores mass.

 

There are a number of issues with this mechanism, because it can lead to ludicrous effects at high levels of tapping or storage, particularly the latter--e.g, one could easily get flung about at ludicrous accelerations and speeds, and at maximum storage one would jump immediately to the speed of light and basically cease to exist.

 

Nonetheless, this is the explanation I see most often, and it does have some merit, but personally I don't particularly like it.

 

2: Iron stores gravity. 

 

I haven't actually seen this proposed before, but to me this makes the most sense. This would allow Wax to be lighter, and more or less float around as he does so often, but would keep his inertia the same, avoiding the problems that plague mass storage, and would prevent weirdness with Conservation of Momentum. Wax being harder to move when tapping would be explainable as an increase in friction, which more or less keeps everything where it is anyway, and so would be difficult to distinguish from actually being more massive.

 

Of course, he would still be crushed flat when tapping heavily, but both of these systems have this problem without a commensurate increase in strength anyway, so we just have to assume that's what happens. 

[Voidus]

As pointed out by others, the magnitude of the buoyant force does not by itself have anything to do with one's density. However, the magnitude of one's weight does, and since this is the force buoyancy is opposing, one only floats if one's density is less than that of material one is in.

 

Another thing: I don't know what Brandon has said about this, but the concept of altering mass while leaving density unchanged makes zero sense unless one is growing or shrinking to compensate. That's like saying I can remove thermal energy from something without cooling it down, or fill a cup without raising the water level inside.

 

Now, as Brandon is a writer, not a physicist, I don't blame him for not really having this thoroughly or consistently laid out, but as of now the exact effects of Feruchemical Iron change more or less according to the situation Wax is in, with numerous contradictions between chapters and between books. As such, it is probably impossible to develop a coherent mechanism for iron that fits all written material, because one just doesn't exist. That being said, however, there are two possibilities for iron's operation:

 

1: Iron stores mass.

 

There are a number of issues with this mechanism, because it can lead to ludicrous effects at high levels of tapping or storage, particularly the latter--e.g, one could easily get flung about at ludicrous accelerations and speeds, and at maximum storage one would jump immediately to the speed of light and basically cease to exist.

 

Nonetheless, this is the explanation I see most often, and it does have some merit, but personally I don't particularly like it.

 

2: Iron stores gravity. 

 

I haven't actually seen this proposed before, but to me this makes the most sense. This would allow Wax to be lighter, and more or less float around as he does so often, but would keep his inertia the same, avoiding the problems that plague mass storage, and would prevent weirdness with Conservation of Momentum. Wax being harder to move when tapping would be explainable as an increase in friction, which more or less keeps everything where it is anyway, and so would be difficult to distinguish from actually being more massive.

 

Of course, he would still be crushed flat when tapping heavily, but both of these systems have this problem without a commensurate increase in strength anyway, so we just have to assume that's what happens. 

It stores something like your interaction with the Higgs field, Brandon is a great author partially because when he doesn't know a field he consults an expert, I believe he consulted a surgeon pretty frequently for Stormlight and Kaladin and I'm sure he's consulted physicists for Allomancy.

[Sirscott13 he/him]

Hey guys I went to the Calamity signing in Orem the other day and asked him personally. He said the weight of your gear and metalminds will weigh you down, but after I asked if you could do it naked with your hand against an ironwall he said yes you would indeed float like a balloon.

Ta-da! Now we know.

Edited February 18, 2016 by Sirscott13

[Voidus]

Hey guys I went to the Calamity signing in Orem the other day and asked him personally. He said the weight of your gear and metalminds will weigh you down, but after I asked if you could do it naked with your hand against an ironwall he said yes you would indeed float like a balloon.

Ta-da! Now we know.

Thought so, iron wire should also work for a more portable variant, plus you can handily tether yourself to the ground so you don't fly off to far, if you were relying on an iron wall one gust would push you off and then you'd splat on the ground

[Three1415]

It stores something like your interaction with the Higgs field, Brandon is a great author partially because when he doesn't know a field he consults an expert, I believe he consulted a surgeon pretty frequently for Stormlight and Kaladin and I'm sure he's consulted physicists for Allomancy.

 

The problem with this explanation is that it also makes no sense. The main reason for this is that, contrary to what the media likes to say, the Higgs mechanism is responsible for very little of the actual mass of particles; indeed, for protons and neutrons, the Higgs field contributes only about 1% of this quantity. The rest exists in the form of the kinetic energy of the confined quarks, which are zipping around at enormous velocities in their strong nuclear force "cages."

 

Indeed, if one were to store this interaction, all one would accomplish is detonating oneself like a nuclear bomb by converting a considerable fraction of one's mass into energy before disintegrating into a rapidly attenuating spray of mesons.

 

Now, devising a realistic explanation for how storing gravity would work is also difficult, but that's partially because no one really knows how gravity does anything anyway...

 

Again, since this is a magical system designed on an "effect first, reasoning second" basis, I highly doubt anything is really going to make much sense, but at the very least we can avoid disseminating explanations that pretend to be valid but actually aren't.

Edited February 19, 2016 by Three1415

[dyring]

The reason why you can only store like, 75% of some things are that you die if you go lower.

 

store all your srength, and your heart wont beat.

Store all your health = die.

 

Weight thou, store all of it and it dont matter healthwise. So sure, if your naked and your metalmind weight less than the air you replace, then youll float. Makes perfect sense.

 

As to exactely how it works and if its gravity or mass etc, there was a giant thread on that somewhere, thou I cant be bothered to find it. It explained it fairly well if I remember right.

Edited February 19, 2016 by dyring

[Voidus]

The problem with this explanation is that it also makes no sense. The main reason for this is that, contrary to what the media likes to say, the Higgs mechanism is responsible for very little of the actual mass of particles; indeed, for protons and neutrons, the Higgs field contributes only about 1% of this quantity. The rest exists in the form of the kinetic energy of the confined quarks, which are zipping around at enormous velocities in their strong nuclear force "cages."

 

Indeed, if one were to store this interaction, all one would accomplish is detonating oneself like a nuclear bomb by converting a considerable fraction of one's mass into energy before disintegrating into a rapidly attenuating spray of mesons.

 

Now, devising a realistic explanation for how storing gravity would work is also difficult, but that's partially because no one really knows how gravity does anything anyway...

 

Again, since this is a magical system designed on an "effect first, reasoning second" basis, I highly doubt anything is really going to make much sense, but at the very least we can avoid disseminating explanations that pretend to be valid but actually aren't.

Just going off the answer Brandon's given, I assume he's discussed it with some physicists and has a reasonably satisfying mechanism.