Standardizing a measurement of investiture.

[Steeldancer he/him]

Ok. So I've been thinking about this. I have some ideas on how it might be done. 

First, you need a universal constant. Lightspeed and Water are great ones, of which the boiling point of water is probably more useful. 

A firesoul may be able to help us here, with a twin with different powers. Given a body of water, and a firesoul, you could measure how much heat they put out with an hour of storing at an average rate. 

Another way would have a bendalloy ferring store all the calories from a particular food (with a known calorie count). 

Another thing that is easy to standardize is weight. As long as you can standardize a store rate, you can determine weight fairly easily with a scale. 

At this point, you need a way to measure investiture. My best idea is to use a standardized steelpush of some sort. Then using that, you can measure how invested an object is, by how not as far it goes. Then you could quantify heat, or calories, as a particular reduction in steelpushability. 

Obviously there are several issues with this, particularly standardizing a storage rate and a push rate. But if it could be done, this could be used to measure things. 

Other useful things to know would be the standard investiture of a soul when born, a way to measure the investiture directly in the spirit realm (I couldn't come up with any ideas for this at all. Ideas would be welcome).

If you could measure investiture directly, you could then put that in proportion with the whole steel push thing to put it in an equation relating investiture to energy. 

Obviously, these calculations cannot be done with what information we have. But if I were in the cosmere, this is the approach I would take. 

An idea for a standard steel push: 1 kg of metal, a gram of steel to burn, burn until it's gone, 150 pound coinshot. Measure time and distance to determine kinetic energy imparted.

[Julio]

Most likely at some point there will be at the least a simple unit of investiture. Probably a "Khriss" or something like that. And breaths(at birth) would be a really good unit of measurement, too. 

[Steeldancer he/him]

3 minutes ago, Julio said:

Most likely at some point there will be at the least a simple unit of investiture. Probably a "Khriss" or something like that. And breaths(at birth) would be a really good unit of measurement, too. 

The problem with that is measuring it. How do you measure a breath?

[Sparkrunner he/him]

50 minutes ago, Steeldancer said:

First, you need a universal constant. Lightspeed and Water are great ones, of which the boiling point of water is probably more useful. 

That would mean making a set of units, of which lightspeed or water would be 1, am I correct?

[Steeldancer he/him]

3 minutes ago, Roadwalker said:

That would mean making a set of units, of which lightspeed or water would be 1, am I correct?

Or whatever. Yeah. I mean you could use Celsius or Kelvin or something sensical. Doesn't matter. 

[Sparkrunner he/him]

Just now, Steeldancer said:

Or whatever. Yeah. I mean you could use Celsius or Kelvin or something sensical. Doesn't matter. 

So were you thinking of 10's, like the metric system? Seems easier.

[KhanBoltNo4503]

Wouldn't the same level of coinshot be necessary, as we've seen that savants, lerasium-mistborn and regular-mistborn/mistings (even they had different power levels based on level of noble blood, as seen with the steelpush fight with Vin and Kelsier), otherwise a push would apply different levels of power anyway.

This could be solved by having something such as a force meter for coinshots/lurchers and determininh how much metal they'd need to do say 10N of force, and then using said amount of metal for the investiture testing.

[Calderis he/him]

38 minutes ago, KhanBoltNo4503 said:

Wouldn't the same level of coinshot be necessary, as we've seen that savants, lerasium-mistborn and regular-mistborn/mistings (even they had different power levels based on level of noble blood, as seen with the steelpush fight with Vin and Kelsier), otherwise a push would apply different levels of power anyway.

This could be solved by having something such as a force meter for coinshots/lurchers and determininh how much metal they'd need to do say 10N of force, and then using said amount of metal for the investiture testing.

Stronger Allomancers burn their metals faster. The energy output is directly proportional to the amount of metal. 

Duralumin works on the same principle. It doesn't make your Allomancy any stronger, it just uses it all at once. 

[KhanBoltNo4503]

I understood that's what duralumin did, but I didn't know that stronger bloodlines affected the burn rate.

That's interesting to know.

[Oversleep]

32 minutes ago, Calderis said:

Stronger Allomancers burn their metals faster. The energy output is directly proportional to the amount of metal. 

Yes; but they also get out more power out of the metal. I asked Brandon that.
(It's not verbatim though)

Quote

Q: Allomantic strength. There are stronger Allomancers, they can burn metals faster, right?
A: Yes, they can also squeeze more power out of it. They can use it more efficiently.
Q: So there is some loss of power along the way? How do savants work into that?
A: Savants can use it way more efficiently.

He also said they are more Connected to the Shard.
Kanrei added that Brandon said that savants are even more efficient and closer to Spiritual realm.

I still feel bad that I did not record that.

[Steeldancer he/him]

I think most coinshots on Scadrial are as weak as they can be. 

[Calderis he/him]

4 minutes ago, Overstorm said:

Yes; but they also get out more power out of the metal. I asked Brandon that.
(It's not verbatim though)

I still feel bad that I did not record that.

I seriously forgot over half of that WoB. It's the one I was thinking about, and I totally forgot all talk of efficiency and Savants. 

I stand corrected. Thanks Sleep. 

[Yezrien]

I think Allomancy isn't quite right for this question, since all it does is tap into a virtually infinite investiture source.

I would try an experiment with feruchemy. Heat (brass) and energy (bendalloy) are both measured in joules. So what's the maximum quantity of, say, heat, that you can store in one gram of brass? And what's the maximum amount of investiture you can store in one gram of nicrosil? Assuming the metals store with the same efficiency/density, those two quantities should be equal. If the brassmind can hold, say, 100 joules of heat, then we might define "one joule of investiture" (or "one millikhriss") as 1/100 of how much you can fit in a one-gram nicrosilmind.

And if you can fill nicrosil with Breaths, you now have a conversion rate between Breaths and joules.

(Obviously this is all dependent on how nicrosil works, which is not well understood at this point.)

You could take some measurements on Roshar, too. I'm sure the luminosity of an infused sphere or gemstone is proportional to the investiture it carries. In fact, Rosharans may have inadvertently already created a standardized system of investiture measure: their gemstone currency. 

Edited September 15, 2017 by Belzedar

[Steeldancer he/him]

1 minute ago, Belzedar said:

I think Allomancy isn't quite right for this question, since all it does is tap into a virtually infinite investiture source.

I would try an experiment with feruchemy. Heat (brass) and energy (bendalloy) are both measured in joules. So what's the maximum quantity of, say, heat, that you can store in one gram of brass? And what's the maximum amount of investiture you can store in one gram of nicrosil? Assuming the metals store with the same efficiency/density, those two quantities should be equal. If the brassmind can hold, say, 100 joules of heat, then we might define "one joule of investiture" (or "one millikhriss") as 1/100 of how much you can fit in a one-gram nicrosilmind.

And if you can fill nicrosil with Breaths, you now have a conversion rate between Breaths and joules.

(Obviously this is all dependent on how nicrosil works, which is not well understood at this point.)

You could take some measurements on Roshar, too. I'm sure the luminosity of an infused sphere or gemstone is proportional to the investiture it carries. In fact, Rosharans may have inadvertently already created a standardized system of investiture measure: their gemstone currency. 

Thats sort of what I said in the original post lol. 

Anyway, does anybody have any ideas how investiture might be measured? Directly? 

[KhanBoltNo4503]

When The Dark One novel comes out, as it is a shardworld with electricity inside the planet, there would most likely be a befitting magic system/some localised format of obtaining the energy (like how @Belzedar said that you could probably measure the amount of stormlight in a sphere). With these systems in place, there should/would eventually be a way to interchange the two, such as x amount of investiture powering this object, with y amount of electricity doing the same.

[Yezrien]

Just now, KhanBoltNo4503 said:

With these systems in place, there should/would eventually be a way to interchange the two, such as x amount of investiture powering this object, with y amount of electricity doing the same.

Yeah, I was thinking there could be something along those lines, like with the "investiture pipeline" the Ire were using.

But what about atium and lerasium? Investiture in solid form, with measurable mass. If there was a way to convert investiture between its intangible and solid forms, we could just use mass. Obviously not an option right now, but it might go that way someday. Especially since, if you could crystallize investiture into standardized metal beads, that would make a cool currency for the late-cosmere interstellar civilizations. You could have a whole investiture-based economy, with whole magic systems rising and falling like stock prices. I bet Brandon would like that.

[KhanBoltNo4503]

Couldn't we also possibly use ettmetal/harmonium to achieve a similar effect, as we know it is 100% investiture, and that it can power machines. Additionally, the reaction with water could possibly be measured and worked out the destructive power of (I'm not really sure about this one, it could be measuring something else, but this was just a half-baked idea that came to me while typing this).

[king of nowhere]

The best system to measure investiture is stormlight: you can take a standard infuse gem as your unit of measurememnt, and calibrate any other gem by sucking the light, use it to lash a standard weight to a wall, and count how long it takes for it to fall.

With feruchemy... it's much harder. The more powerful you are as a feruchemist, the more you can charge a piece of metal - see bands of mourning for that. You can't really calculate a maximum of investiture per gram of metal, and even if you can, you have no guarantee that a gram of brass can store as much as a gram of nicrosil. You'd need some way to convert a form of investiture into another to make good measures, and on scadrial we don't know yet any of those.

[KhanBoltNo4503]

37 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

The best system to measure investiture is stormlight: you can take a standard infuse gem as your unit of measurememnt

Stormlight has been shown to leak from spheres, which was one of the problems Sigzil had wasn't it? So you'd need to measure how long it has been since being infused, exactly how much stormlight was lost (as every gemstone is cut differently, meaning different rates of leakage), and how much is left. In a best case scenario, you would maybe be able to get a fairly decent estimate, or at least with the technology shown in the books.

 

Edited September 15, 2017 by KhanBoltNo4503

[Oversleep]

1 hour ago, king of nowhere said:

The more powerful you are as a feruchemist, the more you can charge a piece of metal - see bands of mourning for that.

What do you mean? I don't recall any information on that.

BTW, we do know what it means to be a weaker Feruchemist.

[king of nowhere]

Step 1: take your standard gem (a small one)

Step 2: measure how long a standard weight remains lashed to a wall. This and all subsequent measures must be taken immediately after a highstorm, so that you can have fully infused gems.

Step 3: take a lot of other gems and make the same measure with all of them. You'll find some gems that hold just as much stormlight as your standard gem.

Step 4: Measure how long the weight remains lashed when using 2, 3, 4 times more stormlight. I expect the relation will not be proportional. Define the relation between how much stormlight you're infusing and how long the object will remain lashed.

Step 5: Now wait time after highstorms and keep making time measures at different times after highstorms. See if you can figure out an equation for stormlight decay into a gem.

Step 6: See if you can correlate stormlight infused with gem luminescence measurement.

 

EDIT @Overstorm

I mean that the bands were so infused that they didn't even blip on wax's alomantic senses. I douubt normal people can store that much power into so little metal.

Edited September 15, 2017 by king of nowhere

[The Technovore he/him]

The biggest problem of standardizing investiture is that it's so freaking complicated. You have genetic allomantic strength, the fact that stormlight leaks from spheres. The allomancer/feruchemist/radiant's strength. The amount of metal burned, the efficiency of investiture per gram of metal.

Breaths would end up having to be the only real way to measure investiture, all other forms would have to somehow be converted to or from breaths for a decent scale. 

Of course, there are other ways to eliminate variables. If it's possible to create a gemstone that doesn't leak at all, then you'd be able to definitively measure the stormlight held in a certain size and type of gem.

If you could have a Lerasium Mistborn burn a gram of each metal, you'd then have a measurement for the amount of investiture in a single gram of metal, burned at 100% efficiency. You could then determine every other allomancers strength by comparing their power output to that one measurement.

Obviously setting any of this up would be impossible in the Cosmere worlds as they are now, Roshar doesn't have advanced gem cutting technology, which I assume would be needed to create a perfect gem. (if that's possible. It might be impossible, just like it's impossible to create a perfect heat machine) Scadrial doesn't have any more Lerasium Mistborn or 1st generation feruchemists. But, if a certain time-traveling scientist could create those scenarios and circumstances, we could create a standard for investiture. 

[king of nowhere]

8 minutes ago, The Technovore said:

The biggest problem of standardizing investiture is that it's so freaking complicated. You have genetic allomantic strength, the fact that stormlight leaks from spheres. The allomancer/feruchemist/radiant's strength. The amount of metal burned, the efficiency of investiture per gram of metal.

Breaths would end up having to be the only real way to measure investiture, all other forms would have to somehow be converted to or from breaths for a decent scale. 

Of course, there are other ways to eliminate variables. If it's possible to create a gemstone that doesn't leak at all, then you'd be able to definitively measure the stormlight held in a certain size and type of gem.

If you could have a Lerasium Mistborn burn a gram of each metal, you'd then have a measurement for the amount of investiture in a single gram of metal, burned at 100% efficiency. You could then determine every other allomancers strength by comparing their power output to that one measurement.

Obviously setting any of this up would be impossible in the Cosmere worlds as they are now, Roshar doesn't have advanced gem cutting technology, which I assume would be needed to create a perfect gem. (if that's possible. It might be impossible, just like it's impossible to create a perfect heat machine) Scadrial doesn't have any more Lerasium Mistborn or 1st generation feruchemists. But, if a certain time-traveling scientist could create those scenarios and circumstances, we could create a standard for investiture. 

You'd be surprised what can be achieved with the power of mathematical analysis. We have plenty of measurements refeerring to pure substances, even though there is no such thing as a pure substance. And we do all that by extrapolating data from substances of known impurity. There are plenty of indirect ways to  calculate investiture. For example, heat is energy. Pushing against a force produces work, which is another kind of energy. Measuring those, you can compare how much investiture is accessing a bronze feruchemist and a coinshot. Once you get some way to calculate investiture from here (resistance of an invested object to steelpush maybe? Set up one of those southern scadrians allomantic machines to produce a standardized push, measure force applied on item), you can calculate the rest.

It's not fast and it's not easy, but it is doable

Edited September 15, 2017 by king of nowhere

[The One Who Connects he/him]

46 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

I doubt normal people can store that much power into so little metal.

That's not how Investiture works.

A certain size object(Metalmind, Shardblade, etc...) can store a certain amount of Investiture. The person storing that Investiture is irrelevant. A weaker one would just fill the object slower, but still reach that same cap eventually.

---

As for the "so little metal," you'd be surprised. Consider what size Nightblood would be if it were shaped like the Bands instead of a Sword. Not that different huh? And Nightblood is massively more Invested than the Bands were.

[Yezrien]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but feruchemy doesn't have power variations like allomancy does. You can either store weight, or you can't. There are no "strong skimmers" and "weak skimmers." The only limit factor that determines how much weight you can store is how much weight you have. And, of course, how much iron you have, because there is a size-based limit.