Cohesion versus Tension

[+Oltux72 he/him]

We haven't seen Tension used. But we got something almost as good. Zu describes what he can do with Tension: making clothing strangle people.

The descriptions of those Surges has the unfortunate naming of the strong versus weak axial interaction. Discussions tend to derail at that point. The problem is that Rosharan atomic theories cannot be all that accurate. They consider the essences fundamental. It makes much more sense to approach Rosharan physics from a classical level before atomic theory.

And if you look at it that way there is something we have that could serve as a candidate phenomenon. Tension controls plastic deformation.

Cohesion does only aplastic deformation and hence cannot give you what Tension can do: turn stuff into springs.

What do you think?

EDIT: And I messed it up mixing up terms. I should have said:

• Tension -> elastic deformation
• Cohesion -> plastic deformation

Edited December 26, 2020 by Oltux72
mixing up of terms

[PeterElricPines he/him]

I've been really wondering about this, and I'm excited to see a theory that looks like it makes sense, but I have no idea what aplastic deformation is and I'm finding it really difficult to wrap my head around it from the Wikipedia pages. I'm not even sure I'm looking at the right pages for what I'm trying to find out. Could you explain in a little more detail?

[+Oltux72 he/him]

3 hours ago, PeterElricPines said:

I've been really wondering about this, and I'm excited to see a theory that looks like it makes sense, but I have no idea what aplastic deformation is and I'm finding it really difficult to wrap my head around it from the Wikipedia pages. I'm not even sure I'm looking at the right pages for what I'm trying to find out. Could you explain in a little more detail?

Sorry for getting things wrong. Writing about physics in a foreign language.

Anyway. At a very basic level objects change their shape if you exert a force on them. Suppose you press on a football. It will get flatter. If you stop pressing it will spring back into the original shape. Do the same thing to a lump of clay and its shape is permanently changed. So far with me?

Now suppose we have a length of wire.

With Tension you can control how hard you need to twist the wire to change its shape. Even more, if you tell the wire that it is very hard to twist and is twisted in its current shape, it will change its shape.
But if you want to make a permanent loop out of the wire, you'll need Cohesion.

To us these differences look like differences in degree of the same phenomenon. But then to us a liquid is a liquid and we do not see a fundamental difference between oil and blood.

[PeterElricPines he/him]

Ohhh, so like, cohesion lets you treat things like clay, tension lets you treat things like rubber? That makes sense, I like it!

Come to think of it, haven't we seen tension once before? It wasn't a standard use, but I seem to recall the Stormfather saying it was that Surge that let Dalinar repair Thaylen City. This was something that Stonewards couldn't have done, so it would've been a mix between tension and adhesion, but maybe it was something like, snapping things back to the way they used to be? That... kinda sorta makes sense? And I think we saw it in one of Dalinar's visions, too. I remember Stormfather pointing out that that guy was using a surge Dalinar had, but not in a way that he'd be able to replicate. I think he was like, making steps in a hillside to be able to walk up more easily.

So we have cohesion as shaping things, and tension as... changing things. A Willshaper can open a hole in the floor, but a Stoneward could make the floor soft and bouncy? That makes a lot of sense. The difference between moving things and changing things.

[Halyo_Alex he/him]

4 hours ago, PeterElricPines said:

Come to think of it, haven't we seen tension once before? It wasn't a standard use, but I seem to recall the Stormfather saying it was that Surge that let Dalinar repair Thaylen City. This was something that Stonewards couldn't have done, so it would've been a mix between tension and adhesion, but maybe it was something like, snapping things back to the way they used to be? That... kinda sorta makes sense?

I think this was a case of Spiritual Tension; elastically snapping the "spiritweb" of the building together, as well as using Adhesion to stick the physical pieces back together.

4 hours ago, PeterElricPines said:

And I think we saw it in one of Dalinar's visions, too. I remember Stormfather pointing out that that guy was using a surge Dalinar had, but not in a way that he'd be able to replicate. I think he was like, making steps in a hillside to be able to walk up more easily.

That was a typo/continuity error; the Stoneward was using Cohesion to Stoneshape the wall.

[PeterElricPines he/him]

13 hours ago, Halyo_Alex said:

That was a typo/continuity error; the Stoneward was using Cohesion to Stoneshape the wall.

Oh, ok, that does make more sense. Thanks.

[KandraAllomancer he/him]

Tension is the modification of object's stiffness, so yes, it should include making things flexible:

Quote

Brandon Sanderson

Adhesion allows you to bind things together.

Gravitation allows you to change the direction and strength of an object's gravitational attraction, including that of yourself, which essentially gives you the power of flight.

Division allows you to manipulate the rate an object decays.

Abrasion allows you to make objects, including yourself, frictionless.

Progression and Regrowth allows you to heal organisms and alter their growth.

Illumination allows you to create illusions.

Transformation allows you to soulcast objects from one material into another.

Transportation allows you to travel between the Cognitive and Physical realms.

Cohesion allows you to alter the shape of solid objects.

Tension allows you to alter the stiffness of objects.

Footnote: This information is only shown on the results pages of the Official Knights Radiant Order Quiz.
The Ten Orders of Knights Radiant (June 9, 2020)

I don't think we've seen pure Tension so far, but Dalinar uses Tension+Adhesion to fix inanimate objects in Thaylen City in Oathbringer. Something weird is actually happening here, as the KR are supposed to learn their primary Surge first (Windrunners and Adhesion, Skybreakers and Gravitation etc.) and we've seen Dalinar using mostly Adhesion so far

Edited December 27, 2020 by KandraAllomancer

[Dunkum he/him]

29 minutes ago, KandraAllomancer said:

Something weirs is actually happening here, as the KR are supposed to learn their primary Surge first (Windrunners and Adhesion, Skybreakers and Gravitation etc.)

I'm not sure this actually holds.  It is true for the skybreakers, but it isn't clear that it is the case for anyone else.  for instance the first surge we really see Kaladin using is the reverse lashing, which combines the two surges.  for that matter, he is clearly far more adept at the basic lashing, which uses only gravitation, than he is at anything adhesion based.  And we've seen Venli do more with Cohesion than Transportation at this point

[KandraAllomancer he/him]

2 minutes ago, Dunkum said:

I'm not sure this actually holds.  It is true for the skybreakers, but it isn't clear that it is the case for anyone else.  for instance the first surge we really see Kaladin using is the reverse lashing, which combines the two surges.  for that matter, he is clearly far more adept at the basic lashing, which uses only gravitation, than he is at anything adhesion based.  And we've seen Venli do more with Cohesion than Transportation at this point

There's a WoB about it:

Quote

Overlord Jebus

So I've noticed a pattern in the way that the Radiants learn their surges. They seem to learn their anti-clockwise surge before their clockwise surge?

Brandon Sanderson

They do.

Overlord Jebus

Excellent, everyone thought I was a crazy person!

Brandon Sanderson

They do tend to-- Now, I'm gonna give you some behind the sausage stuff on that. That is partially for writing expediency reasons.

Overlord Jebus

How do you mean?

Brandon Sanderson

I designed that partially because I didn't want to overwhelm people with too many magic systems at once so I came up with a little bit of a pattern so that I could have a little bit of an in-world reason why we were slowing that down. It's not a hard fast rule, it's something that I've kept to in order to not overwhelm readers so it's more of form following function than the other way around.

Oathbringer London signing (Nov. 28, 2017)

If I remember correctly, Kaladin was using Reverse Lashings subconsciously at first (the same applies to Renarin and his visions), but his first fully aware use of Surgebinding was trying to glue things to the walls of the chasms. Venli was using Transportation to peek into Shadesmar long before she was experimenting with Cohesion

[Ashbringer he/him]

And Shallan is a much better Illuminator than Soulcaster, Jasnah is a much better Soulcaster than Transporter.

I think Dalinar might be some factor of having Kaladin able to somewhat show what Adhesion can actually do. Or Bondsmiths just being weird.