elezraita

WANDERSAIL "I hold the suckling child in my hands, a knife at his throat, and know that all who live wish me to let the blade slip. Spill its blood upon the ground, over my hands, and with it give us further breath to draw" -Dated Shashanan, 1173, 23 seconds pre-death. Subject: A darkeyes youth of sixteen years. Sample is of particular note Honestly, to me this sounds like Lirin when he is performing surgery on Roshone. Honestly, it is doubtful that the death rattle refers to this event; it isn't literal enough. However, by not letting his knife slip, Lirin essentially allowed Roshone to continue strangling and effectively killing Kaladin's family. If Lirin, had just let his knife slip as he was tempted, so much would have happened differently. So, maybe the event is important enough be referred to in a death rattle, but as I said, but the event does not literally fulfill the it. Just figuratively.

On the other hand, we've never seen a Mistborn use either of these metals. Perhaps the interference acts like a Cu cloud and doesn't affect the allomancy of the person using it. Perhaps the degree to which investiture interference occurs has to do with the degree of connection and/or the type of investiture.

Fair enough. In general, there are multiple definitions words can take on when talking about this kind thing. But if there is already a definition from Brandon, you are probably right.

Interfere, again, doesn't mean that something stops working. For instance, light passing from one medium to another is refracted/reflected at the interface because the two media have different indexes of refraction. The propagation vector changes, but the intensity remains largely unchanged depending on the two media. This could be called "interfence". We (I) just don't know enough to say what the effect of the interference on investiture is at a time interface. Honestly, I haven't really thought much about what the physical effects of a time interface. It isn't something one encounters a lot in daily life. Imagine that the interference is analogous to refraction. It wouldn't negate the advantages proposed, just make the a little more unpredictable without a lot experience or a good solvable model. I'm not saying that this is how the time interface interacts with investiture forces. I'm just saying that there are a lot of possibilities.

My favorite character, hands down, is Jasnah. She is logical and strong. She cares about her family and friends with a fierceness that I love, and she stands up for what she believes in without concern for how it will affect her. I adore that kind of integrity. She isn't a fool, meaning that she cares more about the truth than winning the argument. Also, she isn't lawful stupid. Really, she is my kind of woman. That being said, my favorite scene so far when Kaladin is protecting Elhokar, and finally figures out. I get a kick out imagining Graves' face every time.

You are likely correct. It is very unlikely that Brandon considered quantum chemistry when he came up with Harmonium, and it doesn't matter. As you say, it is fun to theorize. Honestly, the mere fact that he thought about this as deeply as he did is phenomenal. Until Pagerunner posted this theory, I had assumed that the whole thing was hand-wavy. That being said, go big or go home, I guess.

It was a joke. I was tongue in cheek implying that Hoid caused the Reod.

I figured that was going to be the case, but I still wonder about Renarin.

It's possible. Honestly, I just assumed he was gay, but given the societal views on gender roles, and how Renarin can't seem to get over his inability to fit them, that makes sense.

Glys, Renarin's spren, is male. A fact that is strange considering that all the other spren we've seen so far are the opposite gender of the proto-KR with whom they are forming the Nahel bond. I have my suspicions as to why Renarin's spren breaks the pattern, but that is neither here nor there. I just felt the need to point out that Glys is a "he". Please carry now with the fascinating discussion.

Ten years earlier?

@The One Who Connects I figured that you didn't really mean gravity, but as Pagerunner has seen, I like to be as rigorous as possible. The force involved in holding nuclei together is, interestingly enough, called the "Strong interaction". It is, according to hyperphysics, 1.67*10^38 times stronger than the force of gravity, though its range is on the femtometer (10^-15 m) scale. Because the mass of subatomic particles is so tiny, their gravitational pull...well, calling it neglible would be the understatement of the history of the world. The thing is, I'm not really a physicist; I'm a physical chemist, so my knowledge of the the strong force and most of particle physics is spotty at best. I find it fascinating, but I've not studied it the way I've studied more chemistry related physics topics. I do know that the last fundamental force we haven't named yet on this thread is called the "weak interaction" or the "electroweak" interaction. It is the force responsible for certain types of radioactive decay among other things. The four fundamental interactions are the strong interaction, electromagnetic interactions (we've been talking about electrostatic forces, but magnetism is related to it because they both originate only from charged particles), the weak interaction, and gravity. Again, the strong and weak interactions are not my area of expertise, but I'm pretty sure I haven't said anything wrong. I hope this answers your question.

I suspect that Renarin has had certain internal struggles over the years that have left him broken enough to be susceptible to the Nahel bond. As a character from a different book from a different author once said: "Teccam explains there are two types of secrets. There are secrets of the mouth and secrets of the heart. Most secrets are secrets of the mouth. Gossip shared and small scandals whispered. There secrets long to be let loose upon the world. A secret of the mouth is like a stone in your boot. At first you’re barely aware of it. Then it grows irritating, then intolerable. Secrets of the mouth grow larger the longer you keep them, swelling until they press against your lips. They fight to be let free. Secrets of the heart are different. They are private and painful, and we want nothing more than to hide them from the world. They do not swell and press against the mouth. They live in the heart, and the longer they are kept, the heavier they become. Teccam claims it is better to have a mouthful of poison than a secret of the heart. Any fool will spit out poison, he says, but we hoard these painful treasures. We swallow hard against them every day, forcing them deep inside us. They they sit, growing heavier, festering. Given enough time, they cannot help but crush the heart that holds them." That truth may apply here...Who knows, though? Maybe there was some hugely traumatic event that caused Renarin to snap, and we just haven't seen it yet.

Ugh...I'll weigh in. Kaladin will go back to Hearthstone and Laral will be married to Roshone. Kaladin will try to save Roshone, but may be too late. He will save Laral, things will be awkward, but Laral will be smitten, yada, yada, yada. She will pursue Kaladin, but Kaladin is all for Shallan, who wants Adolin for now. That is changing. I mean, even Renarin will get in on the Kaladin chrushing. But ultimately, Kaladin will end up with Lift, once she's grown up a little more. Jasnah will end up with Eshonai...:p Yeah, that would be weird.

Much like Pagerunner, I'm a bit confused about what you are proposing in terms of Xenon. Xenon is not a metal; it is a noble gas. This means that it is extremely difficult to get it to react with anything, because it has a full valence shell. I will note, however, that oxides of Xenon that are highly explosive under certain circumstances (but not upon contact with water) can be synthesized. Furthermore, elemental Xe's melting point is around -112 C so it is unlikely to be solid anywhere on Scadrial. Xe just doesn't fit the physical description of Ettmetal. Also, I think that OP said that Brandon said something about super-Cesium, so I'm thinking that Pagerunner is right about the Hm group even though I'm still a little bothered by the Pauli exclusion thing. I want to ask Brandon about it. This is actually a good thought though. You are thinking outside the box. I think Pagerunner did a good job of explaining that the extra investiture force in Hm is not necessarily great enough to overcome the natural electrostatic forces in the atom, so I'll say nothing further about that. I just want to clarify that we are talking about electrostatic forces, not gravitation. They are very different forces, of very different strengths. Gravity has to do with mass/mass interaction and electrostatic interaction has to do with charge interaction. Investiture force...who knows at this point?

I said nothing about your math. It looks fine. The fact is I don't know if your approximations are valid or not. I suppose it would depend upon how close you want to be to the correct answer in the end. People make approximations all the time and then spend ages talking about why the answers they get differ so much from experiment and from other answers obtained with different approximations. Your assumptions are probably fine, as long as you understand what you lose (and gain) by making them, as you have just demonstrated that you do. I didn't realize that you understood your assumptions, and I didn't understand them satisfactorily because you did not justify them to my satisfaction the first time. You just used what looked to me like math based on a misunderstanding of physical principles. Call my reaction a throwback to being a TA. You had skipped steps in your explanation, so I assumed you were missing fundamental understanding. This is often what happens with students. My apologies for treating you as such. It was obvious that you weren't including the neutrons. I asked those questions to get you to think about your assumptions. Again, a throwback to teaching. Please forgive me for my presumptuousness.

I hate to admit this, but I'm confused. Why should sharing and orbital make any difference? The potential in the Schrodinger equation makes no a priori claim of orbitals. In fact, orbitals don't really exist; they are a construct to help us visualize the solutions to the Schrodinger equation. They arise because of the Schrodinger equation and are not taken into account when setting it up and solving it. Any given electron in an atom has a finite probability to be found anywhere in space except for radial and spherical nodes, the number of which depends on the principle and angular momentum quantum numbers, respectively. But quantum numbers don't exist either really, at least not until we solve the Schrodinger equation. They arise from certain boundary conditions that must be satisfied in order for the solutions of the Schrodinger equation to make physical sense. The orbital shapes are simply a description of the probability of finding an electron at a given point in space. And they don't look like planetary orbits either, as some people may imagine. They are more like probability density clouds. For example, s orbitals are spherical; they have n-1 radial nodes, and 0 spherical nodes because l = 0. All of this means that there is a probability of finding a one s electron sitting right next to a 4p electron in space. It isn't likely, but there is nothing forbidding it. The other 1s electron could be right at the nucleus at that moment. This is more likely. In this case, the r between the 4p electron the first 1s electron would be very different to that of the r between the 4p electron and second 1s electron. Even if two 1s electrons were close together at that instant, it is likely that the distance between each one and the 4p electron would be different. What I'm trying to say is that you cannot make the assumption that r_ik = r_jk, because the likelihood of it being true for even an instant is minuscule beyond belief. That is one reason for which this is so complicated. As for the nuclear potential, are we assuming that there is the same number of Preservation and Ruin protons? Also, do the neutrons exert an investiture force on the electrons? I didn't catch that part. Finally, it may help to remember that electrons act like waves more than particles, in a lot on cases. We treat them mathematically like point charges, but they really don't act like particles when they are confined to spaces on the order of their deBroglie wavelength (lambda=h/p, where h is Planck's constant and p is the momentum). Notice how we talk about nodes in the orbitals? In classical mechanics, nodes are not used when discussing particles, only when discussing waves. I do tend to ramble.

I've been warned about people like you with your cookies. Well, really just the cookies.

You are right that changing the constant won't change the form of the solutions to the differential equation (eigenfunctions), but the r is not the same r. In fact, r is indexed such that every r in the sum is a different variable. That is why the Schrodinger equation is impossible to solve without approximate methods for multi-electron atoms: there are the number of electrons coupled variables and one equation. Anyway, I'm still trying to convince myself that having a different constant for each sum wouldn't cause a different form for the solutions because we wouldn't be able to factor out the same constant from all the terms to get all of them in the same sum. I'm going to try to work this out. Imagine if you had three particles all coupled to together such that V = a/r_12 + b/r_13+c/r_23 where a/=b/=c are constants. No matter what you do, you can't factor out the numerator with affecting each denominator in a different way. If we tried, we would get abc(1/(bc*r_12)+1/(ac*r_13)+1/(ab*r_23)). But then we could just say that x_0=r_12/bc, x_1=r_13/ac and x_2=r_23/ab and rewrite this as abc*SUM(1/x_n) from n=0 to 2. I'm guessing we'd have an annoying time with the change of variables for the kinetic energy term, but maybe you are right. Maybe the orbitals would remain hydrogen-like as long as the investiture potential goes as 1/r. It seems like they would be now. huh. It's not the first time I've thought about something more and tentatively changed my mind. Whenever I have to think about things like this, I always feel like I'm missing something in the math. Are there any math people here? That is what we really need. My differential equations skills are rusty, at best. All of this is rusty, as I don't think about it much anymore. The thing about the Pauli exclusion principle is that it only applies to identical fermions, as I said before. Harmony would have to have somehow, as you say, added a fabricated constraint to his metal to force it to behave as if it were following the Pauli exclusion principle. If that is the case, I wonder what happens when an x-ray photon is absorbed by Harmonium. An x-ray photon will knock out a core rather than a valence electron. This, as you can imagine, is a highly energetic electronic configuration, so at that point, another electron from a higher energy orbital will relax and fill that vacancy. The difference in energy between those states is either emitted as a photon or the energy is used to eject another (what is called Auger) electron from the atom. This is called the Auger effect. In real life, the Auger effect is much less likely than the ejection of a photon, but I wonder if balance would cause this not be the case depending on whether is was a ruin or preservation core electron initially ejected. It's a pointless question, but it might give some insight into how precisely balance must be satisfied.

Pagerunner: I'm going to have to think about what you said a bit before I respond. I think that your points are worth considering, but I'll have to actually consider them. I really just want to clarify that I'm neither a real chemist, nor a real physicist. I'm a physical chemist. My research in graduate school (before I got screwed out of my PhD and had to take a masters) was in reaction dynamics. Quantum Mechanics is not exactly my area of expertise, though I did TA P-Chem II one semester (and three semesters of gen chem) while I was a graduate student. My point is that I'm not infallible, and even I still have to check things to make sure I'm not providing incorrect information. However, this stuff is fairly ubiquitous knowledge among p-chemists, though not necessarily among other divisions. I still struggle with inorganic chemistry because it requires such a breath of knowledge, so I will always approach a discussion like this in terms of the underlying physical principles, while I really appreciate the people who have memorized a lot of reaction and reaction classes, for example.

All of them except White Sand, which I have not gotten yet. The first Cosmere book I read was the free version of Warbreaker before it came out, if that gives you an idea of how long I've been reading Brandon's books. I've spent most of my time on Scadrial and Roshar, so I probably know the most about those planets. I'm not sure how useful I can be; everyone here seems steeped in WoB, which I have not really had access to until now. But if you want long, incoherent rants about quantum mechanics, I'm probably your guy.

Thanks. I'll just be around, adding theories, pointing out flaws in theories, asking questions, and generally making a nuisance of myself...in a dignified manner.

Hi, I'm supposed to introduce myself, I guess. I'm just a guy who has been reading and theorizing about Brandon's books for a looooong time. I consider myself a Physical Chemist because I was trained as one, but I work as an Analytical Chemist. Gotta pay the bills. In my free time, I like to read and play/mod video games. Super exciting, I know. That's about it.

Hi, I'm new here, but I thought I'd weigh in. This is going to be long. You may not agree with what I'm about to say, but here goes...Also, disclaimer: I'm tired and I don't want to proofread this right now. It's probably barely coherent. Sorry. I'll proofread it tomorrow when after someone has blasted me for pointing this out. So, if I'm understanding the theory correctly, we are suggesting that there are two different types of electrons in a Harmonium atom because the repulsive force exerted between the Ruin electrons and the Preservation electrons is not uniform across all subatomic particles. This implies that either the fundamental constants regulating the strength of the electrostatic force differs between the two god subatomic particles, or that the electrostatic force is uniform, but there is an extra force associated with each type of electron when it comes in contact with the other type. It doesn't matter which is the case; either way, you've got two different and (more importantly) distinguishable types of negatively charged Fermions in the system. I'm not entirely sure that the physics involved with with having essentially two different types of negatively charged Fermions in an atom would necessarily be those that you're obviously expecting. The Hamiltonian (total energy operator) of that system would be very different from that of a system containing only one type of Fermion because the potential energy portion would be completely different. This would lead to a completely different set of eigenfunctions (in this case, solutions to the Schrodinger equation that describe the atomic orbitals) for the system than you would get for an atom with a set of non-distinguishable (interchangeable electrons). The time independent Schrodinger equation can is H*Y=E*Y where I'll pretend that Y is the Greek letter, Psi, called the wavefunction and E is the energy of the quantum state described by the wavefunction. H is the Hamiltonian, or total energy operator and H = T + V. T is the kinetic energy part and V is potential energy part. The kinetic energy part is just the sum of all the kinetic energies for all of the particles, and this will not be affected by differences in repulsive/attractive forces of the electrons, but it would be affected if the two types had different masses. Note that I am using the Born-Oppenheimer Approximation, that the motions of the electrons are so fast compared to the motion of the nucleus, that we can decouple the kinetic energy of the nucle(us/i) that of the electrons when solving the Schrodinger equation for an atom or molecule. Essentially, we just pretend that the nucleus is fixed and the electrons are the only things that move. This is true in most cases (but not always). Anyway, that was kind of a tangent. Sorry. The potential energy term, V, is a little more complicated and because of this, we can't solve the Schrodinger equation exactly for any atom but hydrogen. In the case of a regular atom (one with only one type of electron) the potential energy is the negative sum of the energy of the electrostatic attractions of every electron with its nucleus minus the sum of all of the electrostatic attractions to any other nuclei around (in the case of molecules) plus the coulomb repulsion of all the other electrons around. This would be easier to show if I could write down the equation, but just to remind you, the coulomb potential (energy) is the product of some constants (which isn't important to the argument) multiplied by the product of the two charges then divided by the distance between the charges, r_ij. You can imagine that each electron feels the electrostatic interaction with all the other charged particles around in inverse proportion to the its distance, r, from the other particles. When one particle changes position, all the rest want to as well, because they want to be as close to the nucleus as possible and as far away from the other electrons as possible (basically, they want to minimize the total energy of the system). Because the magnitude of the charge is the same for every electron, the only variables in this scenario are the distances between particles. We can factor out everything else and make one sum of electrostatic repulsions and one sum of attractions. When we solve the Schrodinger equation with this Hamiltonian, we get eigenfunctions (wavefunctions) that describe the s, p, d, and f orbitals you learned about in gen chem. Now, what would happen if there were two sets of electrons, each with a different magnitude of force it exerts on the other type? There would be more sums in the potential energy term than the ones we got in the first case. There would be (presumably) two sums of the the electrostatic attraction between the nucleus, which is made up of a mixture of ruin protons and preservation protons. One would be for the preservation electrons and one would be for the ruin electrons. I imagine that the ruin electrons would be slightly more attracted to the nucleus than the preservation electrons because there are more ruin protons. Furthermore, instead of there being a single sum of repulsions, there would now be three different sums: one for the ruin/ruin replusion, one for the preservation/preservation repulsions, and one for the ruin/preservation repulsions. This difference in the Hamiltonian from one set of indistinguishable fermions to two of them, would likely change the eigenfunctions of the Hamiltonian in the Schrodinger equation to such a degree that there is no guarantee that the atomic orbitals would even be hydrogen-like, and the element's physical and chemical properties would defy all rational attempts to place it in the periodic table at all. At the very least, the energy levels would change substantially, which would definitely affect it's reactivity. I don't want to go through trying to solve a differential equation like that. Actually, the real world version is already impossible to solve analytically, except for the case of the Hydrogen atom. Solving the Harmonium version of the equation with approximate solutions wouldn't be fun either. I certainly wouldn't be able to do it. Note that all this is assuming that the potential of the god repulsions is goes as 1/r like coulomb (electrostatic) repulsions and gravity. What if the god repulsion potential goes as r^-2 or r^-3...or r^-(3/2)? If that is the case, the Hamiltonian will have even more terms, and will yield wavefunctions that are even less Hydrogen-like, thus throwing all this wonderful chemical intuition that has been demonstrated here out the window, so to speak. Okay, I get that that was super long and probably not well explained. I'm lazy, I guess. My apologies. One last thing. The Pauli exclusion principle states that two identical Fermions cannot occupy the same set of quantum numbers (n,l, m_l, m_s). This fact leads to the Aufbau principle, which is that in the electronic ground state, electrons occupy successively higher energy atomic orbitals in pairs. By this, I mean that each electron shares the principle quantum number, n; the angular momentum quantum number, l; and the magnetic quantum number, m_l. Only the spin (projection) quantum number, m_s differs between the two. One is m_s=-1/2 (spin down), and one is m_s=1/2 (spin up). The Pauli exclusion principle again dictates how bonding works. Atomic orbitals combine in such a way as to form molecular orbitals. I could go more in depth on this, but it is sufficient to understand that bonding (and anti-bonding) molecular orbitals are filled the same way as atomic orbitals: in pairs. How would the filling of energy levels work if there two types of electrons? This sounds like a graduate level quantum mechanics homework question. The Pauli exclusion principle only refers to identical Fermions. If there were two types of fermions, would this mean that each orbital (assuming that the orbitals are hydrogen-like) would be able to contain four electrons instead of two? This would certainly be interesting. We are assuming 55 electrons. Let's see: 1s4,2s4,2p12,3s4,3p12,4s4,3d15 which would put it at...Zinc, but it would be paramagnetic, like Manganese. That's weird. Anyway, sorry for this being so long. tl;dr version: Having two different, distinguishable types of electrons would break Physics, and therefore Chemistry to the point where our Chemical understanding would not really apply. If Harmonium is an alloy, I'm all for that. I just don't think it makes physical sense for Harmonium to be an atom. I just noticed NavySealsGuy's post. Yes, very probably, for the reasons I talked about relating to the eigenfunctions of the Hamiltonian.