Bad alloys in Allomancy

[A Joe in the Bush]

Mistborn Pages 137 and 138

"The more pure they are, the more effective they. The vials we prepare contain absolutely pure metals, <Talking about where to buy>If you want maximum strength from your metal, you have to use those percentages."

Kelsier is talking!

"If the mixture is only off by a bit, you'll still get some power out of it. However, if it's too far oof, burning it will make you sick."

The Well of Ascension, Page 57

"The last time you tried to burn on of those it left you sick for two days, Vin. I was terrified"

"It can't kill me," Vin said. "Kelsier promised that burning a bad alloy would only make me sick."

Mistborn Chapter 7

“Never try to burn a metal that isn't one of the ten. I warned you that impure metals and alloys can make you sick. Well, if you try to burn a metal that isn't Allomantically sound at all, it could be deadly.”

So apparently all metals are allomanticlly reactive, but some just have the effect of killing you. If you were to burn Lead, you could die. So when does an alloy become a bad alloy? Kelsier said that the Purer the metal is, the more power you get, but if the alloy is off, you still get Power. So if you're burning 98% tin and 2 % lead, then the lead doesn't do anything. Yet, if you burn 91% tin, and 9% lead, you get pewter. When does a metal become a weak Alloy? is 96% tin 4% lead a weak Tin or a Weak Pewter? Is it Both?

 

I'm assuming that since you can burn all metals, they all have they're own sDNA, but how is the sDNA of a non-allomantic metal deadly? and how do two types of sDNA combine to form a new alloy? When does a pewter alloy have enough lead to become deadly?

 

For that matter, if Aluminum destroys the sDNA of  metals, how can it possibly be alloyed with Copper?

 

Recap, When does a percentage become weak? Deadly? How does it become deadly?

[Swimmingly he/him]

I think it's to do with the fact that each type of allomantic Investiture can be thought of as a key, and each type of Misting has a lock fitted to that key, with Mistborn having all the locks. When you try to use a key in the lock that isn't perfect, it rattles and has trouble turning, expending energy to hurt you. When it's just wrong, it flies at the door full force and skewers it. This is just an analogy

[MistLord he/him]

The 96% tin and 4% lead idea is fascinating. As for how much lead is used before it becomes deadly when burned, I imagine it would have some kind of tie in with real life metallurgy, as metals can vastly change their properties depending on what metals are mixed. I wonder if we have any metallurgists at the 17th Shard...

[king of nowhere]

The amount the percentage can be off is never stated.

 

However, as a chemist, I did some speculation on the matter (would be too long to find old thread, faster to just do it again)

- iron with 0% carbon is iron. iron over 4% carbon is cast iron. carbon must be between 0 and 4% to have steel, so the amount of carbon in steel must be accurate within a 2% at most

- there are a lot of other impurities that are found in metal, and with final empire technology it is virtually impossible to get a 98% purity on most metals, so a 2% contamination in many cases is not too bad

 

That lead (no pun intended) to the conclusion that different metals and different impurities can be off in different ways. steel would be ruined by 1% more carbon, but 1% nichel would do little harm.

So my speculation is that it depends on the cognitive identity of the metal. if the impurity is enough to change the identity of the metal, it will not be allomantically good. And cognitive identity of a metal would likely have to do with its behaviour: if a small difference in composition do not alter much its properties, then the metal is congitively the same. that fits with the previous assertions: 1% of carbon in steel make a big difference, while other metals commonly found in iron don't affect greatly its properties iin small concentration.

[lyht]

 

I'm assuming that since you can burn all metals, they all have they're own sDNA, but how is the sDNA of a non-allomantic metal deadly? and how do two types of sDNA combine to form a new alloy? When does a pewter alloy have enough lead to become deadly?

 

For that matter, if Aluminum destroys the sDNA of  metals, how can it possibly be alloyed with Copper?

 

The sDNS of metals? That is new to me. I fairly sure I read WOB state that the metal is actually a pattern. So I would imagine that if the metal is off, the pattern is wrong. And just like Aons that are not drawn correctly, metals that are off can have bad consequences.

[Two McMillion he/him]

The 96% tin and 4% lead idea is fascinating. As for how much lead is used before it becomes deadly when burned, I imagine it would have some kind of tie in with real life metallurgy, as metals can vastly change their properties depending on what metals are mixed. I wonder if we have any metallurgists at the 17th Shard...

 

I'm a Materials Engineer who heavily studied metallurgy. Unfortunately, though I've looked into it given the information we have, I've yet to find an exact correlation between real-life metal properties and  allomantic ones.

 

For instance, in real life we use a phase diagram to understand the properties of different mixtures of metals together. Here's the one for tin and lead:

 

 

This one is actually kind of close- about 4% lead in tin is pretty close to the solubility limit of lead in tin. That's probably where I would put it if I was inventing allomancy- it might make some vague scientific sense (though the eutectic point might make more sense- eutectic points are special). Similarly, there's a solubility limit for 4.35wt% copper in aluminum, which is pretty close to Duralumin.

 

Edit: I realized the allomantic mixture for Pewter is 9% Lead in tin, so scratch the above- nothing interesting happens at that mixture. Here's the copper in aluminum phase diagram, so you can see one where it works:

 

Edit 2: I misread this diagram, but I'll leave it in the post to look more intelligent. HAIL SCIENCE!

 

 

Allomantic bronze is 75% copper, 25% ton. Here's the copper-tin phase diagram:

 

 

 

There's a eutectoid point at that percentage, so scientifically it's an important place. The problem is that the copper-tin system has several metallurgically important points like that, so it's not obvious just by looking at it that that's the one. Steel is similiar; it's a surprisingly complicated alloy system.

 

Compare the phase diagram for silver and gold:

 

 

The mixture for allomantic electrum is 45% gold and 55% silver, but nothing on this diagram tells me anything special is happening at that mixture ratio.

 

Personally I think Brandon looked up a few phase diagrams and just fudged others that didn't fit what he wanted. It's close, but it's not to the point where I could pull up a phase diagram for the associated system and say, "Yep, that's the allomantic mixture, all right"- although it might help with educated guessing.

Edited May 8, 2014 by Two McMillion

[A Joe in the Bush]

Personally I think Brandon looked up a few phase diagrams and just fudged others that didn't fit.

That's Pretty much what he does with all of his Magic Systems. Though he does it really well. And thank you for the feedback.

Edited May 8, 2014 by The Only Joe

[el_warko he/him]

Somone should ask Brandon what burning Auricupride (Cu3Au) or tetra-auricupride (CuAu) would do.  Cloud your allomancy in the past?

[Swimmingly he/him]

Most likely, it would...kill you. Those are alloys, not just badly made metals. It would be like burning silver - even though it's a large part of electrum, it's allomantically inert itself.

[A Joe in the Bush]

But that's the Thing. Aluminum Destroys Metals inside you. Why does alloying it with Copper, the ability to Hide metals, Super charge the metals? It seems more likely to Make an Illusion of metals in your belly.

 

Copper-Gold would maybe Make a fake possible self?  You know, I think it would be a lot safer to use a Feruchemist to find new metals than a Mistborn. But now I want to think of new combos. Cadium-Zinc, Target can't change emotional state?

[Swimmingly he/him]

But that's not how Allomancy works. Alloying two metals produces something with an opposite effect to the prime metal in the alloy, and there are only eight alloys that work and don't have God metals in them.

[A Joe in the Bush]

Yes yes, but it's so fun! On a Side note, I think that Atium Brass or Atium Zinc would allow you to sense what Emotion someone is feeling.

[Two McMillion he/him]

Aluminum is a bit unusual for a metal (most notably, it tends to form covalent bonds rather than metallic ones in compounds). Occasionally people actually classify it as a metalloid instead of a metal for that reason. If I had to pick a reason for its unusual behavior, that might be it, since Aluminum is definitely the most metallic of the possible metalloids (nobody agrees on exactly which elements are metalloids).

 

But any attempt to try and find a scientific pattern in the metal selections seems doomed to failure. For instance:

 

 

If we're discussing properties of metals as they relate to the allomantic table, nothing from the periodic table would indicate to me in the slightest that Iron and Tin are both external metals here. Generally, we expect elements in the same column to have similar properties, but the Allomantic metals don't relate to each other that way. If you have the allomantic table to work with, you could maybe make some predictions, but honestly I think that that's just me pulling patterns where there really aren't any.

 

The choices for allomantic metals don't match what's common in the Earth's crust, either- Aluminum is the most common metal on Earth, followed by Iron, but after that there's nine more metals before we find another allomantic one- Chromium. If there's a pattern here other than Brandon picking metals pre-industrial societies can refine and that most people have heard of, I don't see it.

[A Joe in the Bush]

Silver was supposed to be used instead of Tin in Mistborn Prime.