Brass Feruchemy, regarding potential

[Silva]

This question came up in an RP:

Does tapping into the heat of a brass metalmind make you physically warmer to the touch?

And if it does, would one potentially be able to set flammable objects on fire if one could concentrate the heat/energy in one place?

[+hwiles]

On 9/28/2018 at 10:33 AM, Silva said:

This question came up in an RP:

Does tapping into the heat of a brass metalmind make you physically warmer to the touch?

And if it does, would one potentially be able to set flammable objects on fire if one could concentrate the heat/energy in one place?

The amount of heat a person radiates (approximately 100 watts for a healthy adult) is proportional to their body temperature, in Kelvin, to the 4th power.

It strikes me as reasonable to assume that a brass ferring would suffer hallucinations, decreased consciousness, and progressive organ damage at extreme body temperatures (>105F) just like anyone else. I won't get into the deep thermodynamics because they are a little counterintuitive, but if the previous assumption wasn't true to an extent, a brass ferring could more easily survive being in an oven by raising their temperature rather than trying to lower it, which I believe we have a WoB saying that wouldn't work because it's silly and confusing.

With all that in mind, we're talking about roughly a 5 to 10% maximum increase in heat output at the risk of death or permanent brain damage.

On the flipside, mechanical feruchemy, which is loosely hinted at by the Southerners, could potentially mean that machines might eventually be created that are able to store and tap heat. This has infinite applications, but the simplest that comes to mind is a supercharged feruchemic heatgun, which, based on real-life heat guns, could absolutely start fires. 

[Quantus he/him]

Yes, tapping or filling a Brass metalmind physically changes your body temperature.  You can, for example, start filling it to physically become colder, then you will be resistant (but not immune) to hot environs.  And like Iron ferrings not crushing themselves with their increased mass, Brass does grant a certain amount of thermal resistance compared to regular people, and they can do more by carefully regulating their metalmind usage, but Brass does not offer general immunity. 

As far as I can tell, there is no way for a Ferring to focus the heat to any single location, I dont think you could make a flamethrower any more than a Cadmium Gasper could create wind effects.  That being said, you could probably pull it off with a bit of Harmonium (and ingenuity) since you could use that to externalize the Feruchemy effect.

For what it's worth there is quite some debate and no conclusion as to what a Brass Twinborn might look like, or if they could survive the sort or heat flair they might see via chromium attack, for example.

[Tglassy]

Well, if the feruchemy alters the body to withstand the changes, like Iron does, then I don't see why it couldn't alter the brain to withstand more heat.  

 

I suppose it would be determined by how much heat is needed to counter the colder weather.  A normal person was able to use the heat to make the freezing temps of the Temple feel like 70 degrees.  But even a Southern Scadrian was able to do that, and to them, those same Freezing felt more like subzero.  How much extra heat would the body need to produce to make one feel like subzero temperatures felt like 70 degrees?

[Calderis he/him]

I mean.... The southerners were adapted to live in world of Ash era Scadrial, with no protective Ash cover, in a world where at the equator the seas boiled. 

The southerners should have been dead.

I think the "adaptation" TLR used to make this possible while preserving their genetics was Spiritual and using the exact same portion of the spiritweb that brass stores and taps from. 

I see no reason why tapping wouldn't protect the user like every other instance of Feruchemy we've seen. 

[Quantus he/him]

On 9/30/2018 at 2:02 PM, hwiles said:

The amount of heat a person radiates (approximately 100 watts for a healthy adult) is proportional to their body temperature, in Kelvin, to the 4th power.

That's true but for what it's worth that is only the radiant part of the heat transfer, the temperature change will have separate effects on the convective/conductive sides which will generally dominate for personal heat. 

On 9/30/2018 at 2:02 PM, hwiles said:

It strikes me as reasonable to assume that a brass ferring would suffer hallucinations, decreased consciousness, and progressive organ damage at extreme body temperatures (>105F) just like anyone else. I won't get into the deep thermodynamics because they are a little counterintuitive, but if the previous assumption wasn't true to an extent, a brass ferring could more easily survive being in an oven by raising their temperature rather than trying to lower it, which I believe we have a WoB saying that wouldn't work because it's silly and confusing.

With all that in mind, we're talking about roughly a 5 to 10% maximum increase in heat output at the risk of death or permanent brain damage.

On the flipside, mechanical feruchemy, which is loosely hinted at by the Southerners, could potentially mean that machines might eventually be created that are able to store and tap heat. This has infinite applications, but the simplest that comes to mind is a supercharged feruchemic heatgun, which, based on real-life heat guns, could absolutely start fires. 

Nah, we have a WOB that all (standard) feruchemy (and brass specifically) protects the user from the effects of the feruchemy itself just not to the actual physics overall. So Brass arent immune to thermal damage from actual fire or ice, but they cannot give themselves hypo- or Hyperthermia by using their metalminds even though their body temperature changes more than normal, in the same way that Iron feruchemy prevents them from being crushed under their own weight but doesnt make them stronger or more durable in any other regard. 

 

As far as the methods to use the metalmind to avoid/mitigate environmental damage, I think both methods would theoretically work, though I think the Lowering to avoid Heat damage would be easier to pull off in-world that raising it.  Im operating under the assumption that the metalmind is storing away thermal energy the way iron stores (higg's field quantum) mass.  By that, you could resist heat by attempting to match your surface temperature to the environment so there is no thermal difference to drive the transfer, but doing so would require you to pretty perfectly match the flowrates, and it any twitch of movement is going to change the convection and so change the amount of heat you'd need to release; also you'd eventually run out of stored thermal energy.  I think going cold by filling the metalmind, and so providing a cold sink that takes the thermal away before it builds up to damaging levels, would be a far less delicate and more forgiving a method; with the added benefit of not requiring prepared stores of investiture. 

 

 

[+hwiles]

@Quantus I feel like if storing health makes a person get sick more easily, storing nutrition causes hunger, and storing liquid causes dehydration, then storing heat should result in the natural consequences of low body temperature, namely, reduced biochemical efficiency and, if pushed to the extreme, hypothermia; I expect the magic user would probably faint before they could die, just like a person can't kill themself just by holding their breath, so they would still technically be protected.

If you tap too much iron you will crush the ground beneath you and, despite Wax being insanely lucky in this regard, that could reasonably result in being impaled on the shards.

Touche on the fact that I can't prove my point, but I argue that, on penalty of extreme inconsistency with the rest of Feruchemy, it would be very silly for brass ferrings to be able to tap an arbitrary amount of heat without suffering both the positive and negative effects of fever, including hallucinations, and destruction of both good and bad bacteria in their body.

[Quantus he/him]

@hwiles, setting aside that we have WOB that specifically states that brass does not work the way you think it should, I do see your objection. It's not unlike my hangup that if bendalloy can store food and water separately, that should extend to oxygen as well and not require a separate metal. 

They way I look at it is this: Feruchemy allows it's user to temporarily alter some natural part of yourself, and the whole self temporarily adjusts to this redefined "You".  In the case of Iron it changes your mass and the rest of your Self (as defined in your sDNA) adjusts to match, but only Internally (because magic), which is why they get stronger only for the purposes of Self but not for any external interaction, even if the physics of it should be the same.  For Brass I think it both changes the thermal effects and also changes what the ferring's "natural" temperature is to match; so they dont get hypothermia because their body's natural target temperature has been changed concurrently. 

Hell, we're picking on brass and Iron, but Atium is hands down the most vague in terms of practical effect (outside of the purely psychological ones). 

[Calderis he/him]

Look at the example of Gold. Storing does not cause you to get sick in itself. It just lowers your bodies ability to fight of diseases, an external factor. 

[Embrisk he/him]

Buut. You could probably become as hot as you wanted if you stored up enough health to go with it.
*Turns up body temperature to the temperature of lava, while grabbing guys face*

[Tglassy]

On 10/2/2018 at 11:00 AM, Quantus said:

 It's not unlike my hangup that if bendalloy can store food and water separately, that should extend to oxygen as well and not require a separate metal. 

 

I saw someone, maybe you, mention this before.  This isn't the case.  Oxygen is not the same as nutrition, nor serves the same function, nor even enters the body in the same way. Bendalloy stores ingested nutrition.  Calories, hydration, etc.  Things your body needs to DIGEST in its stomach.  Oxygen enters through the lungs.  In Humans, this happens to be done through the same place, I.e., the mouth.  But there are creatures, such as dolphins and whales, who have completely separate oxygen intake holes than the food intake holes.

So it makes sense that you could't store these two completely separate body function in the same metal, as much as it makes sense that you can store EITHER of these functions in a metal.   

[Quantus he/him]

On 10/13/2018 at 2:37 PM, Tglassy said:

I saw someone, maybe you, mention this before.  This isn't the case.  Oxygen is not the same as nutrition, nor serves the same function, nor even enters the body in the same way. Bendalloy stores ingested nutrition.  Calories, hydration, etc.  Things your body needs to DIGEST in its stomach.  Oxygen enters through the lungs.  In Humans, this happens to be done through the same place, I.e., the mouth.  But there are creatures, such as dolphins and whales, who have completely separate oxygen intake holes than the food intake holes.

So it makes sense that you could't store these two completely separate body function in the same metal, as much as it makes sense that you can store EITHER of these functions in a metal.   

No, I definitely understand the difference between lungs and the stomach, or mouths and blowholes.  My issue has nothing to do with how they are taken into the body and everythign to do with how they actually exist within the body since the feruchemy acts on whats in your bloodstream, not the material during the act of ingestion.  The only difference between the Oxygen in your blood and the water is (arguably) those two hydrogen molecules.  Sure you could say that the Oxygen is bound up in a much more complex storage and transport system (hemoglobin) but then the same would apply to an abstracted "Nutrition".  And the real kicker is that Water is different enough from Nutrition to require distinct metalminds while Oxygen needs a whole other Metal; because in presence and in function the the Oxygen less different from Nutrition and from Hydration than those things are from each other.  I think they should either be all three in one metal, or three separate metals entirely.  

The only way the current grouping makes sense is because of the general perception of Stomach-based absorption of nutrients and lung-based air.  Which I understand is a primally reinforced distinction thanks to our drowning reflexes, and that is enough in the Cosmere where perception and Intent shape so many things, it just doesnt make as much sense in a purely functional light.