F-Nicrosal and other magic systems

[Elsecaller_17.5 he/him]

I’m sure this has been asked and answered before, but I couldn’t find on the coppermind so I thought I check with you guys.  Nicrosal is one of the least understood Feruchemical metals with its investiture storing properties, and I have several questions about it.

Does it do any good without some other sort of power though? You can’t even make an unsealed nicrosal metalmind without also having identity. 

What all can you store? The coppermind states you can store the ability to surgebind and a divine breath, but what about other breaths or just pure stormlight to fuel that surgebinding? If it can store stormlight would it leak?

How would it work with allomancy. The biggest advantage of Feruchemy over Allomancy is that you can tap everything at once while Allomancers have an upper limit. What if an Allomancer burned massive amounts of steal but instead of pushing he just dumped all of the power into a Nicrosal metalmind. Could he than produce impossibly powerful pushes? Could this be how the TLR soothes so powerfully or has that been confirmed to just be nicrosal compounding? Did he even have nicrosal?

 

[Karger he/him]

1 hour ago, Truthwatcher_17.5 said:

Does it do any good without some other sort of power though? You can’t even make an unsealed nicrosal metalmind without also having identity. 

A full feruchmist could store and then tap nicrosil in order to get better at tapping or storing for a short while.  However it is not realy good for anything if their are not already other power systems.

1 hour ago, Truthwatcher_17.5 said:

What all can you store? The coppermind states you can store the ability to surgebind and a divine breath, but what about other breaths or just pure stormlight to fuel that surgebinding? If it can store stormlight would it leak?

You can store breaths in basically anything so I imagine so.  I see no reason why you could not store pure stormlight in a separate metalmind.  If you can it would leak as determined by the laws of the thermodynamics.

[Scion of the Mists]

10 minutes ago, Karger said:

 I see no reason why you could not store pure stormlight in a separate metalmind.  If you can it would leak as determined by the laws of the thermodynamics.

Which law of thermodynamics are you referring to? Don’t we have an example of non-leaking storage in the perfect gemstones?

[Karger he/him]

1 hour ago, Scion of the Mists said:

Which law of thermodynamics are you referring to? Don’t we have an example of non-leaking storage in the perfect gemstones?

The second law of thermodynamics says that the entropy of any isolated system always increases.  While perfect gemstones are quite good at holding stormlight or spren they are not actually perfect.  No perfect system of that kind can exist in nature.  I believe brandon acknowledged that stormlight will eventually leek out of the king's drop it would just not be for many many years.

[Scion of the Mists]

16 hours ago, Karger said:

The second law of thermodynamics says that the entropy of any isolated system always increases.  While perfect gemstones are quite good at holding stormlight or spren they are not actually perfect.  No perfect system of that kind can exist in nature.  I believe brandon acknowledged that stormlight will eventually leek out of the king's drop it would just not be for many many years.

Can you provide your source?  I can't find anything on Arcanum or the Coppermind.  

It says explicitly in Oathbringer that perfect gemstones can hold Stormlight indefinitely:

Quote

Captain Ico grunted. "Foreign technology," he said. "Dangerous. Draws the wrong spren." He shook his head. "At Celebrant, the moneychangers have perfect gemstones that can hold the light indefinitely. Similar."

"Perfect gemstones? Like, the Stone of Ten Dawns?"

"I don't know of this thing. Light in a perfect stone doesn't run out, so you can give Stormlight to the moneychangers. They use devices to transfer it from smaller gemstones to their perfect ones. Then they give you credit to spend in the city."

[Karger he/him]

1 hour ago, Scion of the Mists said:

It says explicitly in Oathbringer that perfect gemstones can hold Stormlight indefinitely:

That is in world knowledge and is probably unreliable.  If they work for a few centuries or millennia I doubt anyone knows or cares because functionally they are perfect.  However I do not believe that you can hold an object in a higher energy state without increasing entropy indefinitely.

[Scion of the Mists]

14 minutes ago, Karger said:

That is in world knowledge and is probably unreliable.  If they work for a few centuries or millennia I doubt anyone knows or cares because functionally they are perfect.  However I do not believe that you can hold an object in a higher energy state without increasing entropy indefinitely.

Sure.  It's perfectly possible that they're wrong.  But if that's what the text says, and Brandon's said nothing to the contrary, why assume otherwise?  

[Karger he/him]

47 minutes ago, Scion of the Mists said:

Sure.  It's perfectly possible that they're wrong.  But if that's what the text says, and Brandon's said nothing to the contrary, why assume otherwise?  

Because the laws of thermodynamics which do exist in the cosmere say that they are wrong.

[Quantus he/him]

20 hours ago, Karger said:

The second law of thermodynamics says that the entropy of any isolated system always increases.  While perfect gemstones are quite good at holding stormlight or spren they are not actually perfect.  No perfect system of that kind can exist in nature.  I believe brandon acknowledged that stormlight will eventually leek out of the king's drop it would just not be for many many years.

Minor (but I think crucial) Nit-Pick:  The 2nd Law doesnt technically say that, it says that the total Entropy of an Isolated System "cannot Decrease".  It still allows for the Ideal Case where the isolated system remains in Equilibrium, which very well may be the case in the Cosmere where the interactions of the Three Realms are what are defining reality rather than a purely Physical model. The only instances of "losses" that we've seen in the cosmere are in Hemalurgy where the lost Investiture is returning to the Spiritual Realm (per WOB) and in the Stormlight Leakage which is part of the fundamental nature of Stormlight (specifically) that wants to leak back out and rejoin the realmic cycle (but per WOB is still not lost to the system).

[Karger he/him]

5 hours ago, Quantus said:

Minor (but I think crucial) Nit-Pick:  The 2nd Law doesnt technically say that, it says that the total Entropy of an Isolated System "cannot Decrease".  It still allows for the Ideal Case where the isolated system remains in Equilibrium, which very well may be the case in the Cosmere where the interactions of the Three Realms are what are defining reality rather than a purely Physical model. The only instances of "losses" that we've seen in the cosmere are in Hemalurgy where the lost Investiture is returning to the Spiritual Realm (per WOB) and in the Stormlight Leakage which is part of the fundamental nature of Stormlight (specifically) that wants to leak back out and rejoin the realmic cycle (but per WOB is still not lost to the system).

I lie down corrected.