Red Star

The main reason I express this doubt is so that I may better understand how Sanderson was driven to ignore the obvious advantage his protagonists could have easily gained by accelerating small bits of metal to incredibly fatal velocities by way of (duralumin-assisted) Steelpushing. Yes, you can handwave the impetus away as having been transferred to the earring as it was supported by the wall behind Marsh, but that does not change the fact that she should have blown a hole in the goddamn keep. Rationalize canon all you want, I know of no explanation for the characters not using their capacity to accelerate bits of metal to incredible velocities to kill each other in spectacular ways, except that it would defeat the plot; sort of like bringing a high-caliber howitzer to a knife fight. Sure, there's a keep wall tenuously protecting canon in this particular situation, but is there anything except the needs of the plot stopping Mistborn from Duralumin-Pushing their metal until friction turns it into molten slag? What do you guys even think would happen if someone were to Duralumin Push a coin?

When trying to imagine the effect of accelerating a projectile to great speeds, it helps to remember guns. Many movies show victims of bullets being thrown bodily by the force of the impact, but this is inaccurate. The force of the bullet's impact is less than the recoil of the gun that fired it (due to loss). Action and reaction, as the Mistborn novels are so fond of illustrating, tells us that the force that hurled Vin into a wall must have its opposite counterpart. Since she was targeting the earring, that must be where it ended up. And yet, most of the impetus seems to simply disappear. Your objection smells like another slight problem I had with Mistborn's physics, which was that (at least early in the books) a Steelpusher would not be able to support his weight using a coin until AFTER it hit the ground. Which is ridiculous; trying to accelerate a coin in midair would push you back just as readily as a coin supported by the ground. Though this problem is remembered, not researched, so I may have just been reading it wrong at the time. Furthermore, accelerating a coin in midair enough to support your weight might be undesirable for the large, unstealthy impact it would create (though transferring more than your weight to an object massing not more than a gram probably raises other issues I haven't mentioned). Anyway, I would still like to know why projectiles in Mistborn don't blow people apart with the mere wind of their passing, create sonic booms and light the atmosphere on fire with friction alone. Surely this would be both awesome and more physically accurate than not doing so?

Thanks for your feedback, your thread link was certainly enlightening and it seems that we came to many of the same conclusions. Indeed, conservation of velocity and nonlinear power scaling explains most of what we see in canon. It makes me wonder why Wax doesn't make a habit out of exploiting mass-boosted Steelpushing as if it were free Duralumin.

Anyone increasing their mass via Irontapping would need to be proportionally stronger in order to support their own weight. And even though it doesn't look very intuitive, conserving momentum while increasing mass would decrease your velocity. Gravity doesn't enter into it, since gravity is a constant acceleration. You would be under the influence of gravity before and after the mass shift, but the shift itself would change your velocity were momentum conserved. The amount of force imparted to both you and the other object IS the force with which you Push or Pull. The resulting accelerations for both you and the other object depend on your respective masses. My point is that I see Wax deploying much stronger Pushes when he is tapping from his Ironmind. Either Push force scales with mass, or Wax should *always* be strong enough to crush buildings, something Vin needed to ingest the Mists before doing. As for Wax appearing in future novels, I think I remember Sanderson stating somewhere that he planned to do a modern-era trilogy and that Alloy of Law was just an in-between idea that ended up being so awesome it got its own book. Which I can understand, really. What kind of author could possibly resist using his magic setting in an Western when given the chance?

Ever since the introduction of Duralumin in Well of Ascension (And Vin's daring ballistic launch in her rescue of Breeze early in WoA) I have waited for some Mistborn to use this to launch projectiles at ludicrous speed. Until this was attempted against Zane using coins (he countered with his own Duralumin Push) I hypothesized that the projectiles would travel far too fast for any Mistborn or Coinshot to counter. When I finally saw it performed with a single light projectile (earring) in the Vin/Marsh fight in Fadrex (Hero of Ages), I was disappointed in its execution. The narration describes Vin being thrown back into a wall with the force of the Push, and the result of the push was not only an intact earring, but Marsh escaping with nothing more than a hole through his head! If I remember correctly Vin was launched into a wall, implying that she was accelerated to about 13.9 m/s (50km/h). Assuming Vin weighs about 50 kg, transferring the 695 kg-m/s impetus to a 2g earring results in the earring traveling at 347500 m/s. This is about 7 times faster than a falling star, and the atmosphere up there is much thinner; just the friction the earring causes by moving that fast would create a huge fireball, and the earring in question would have quickly turned to plasma. Marsh's head should have been vaporized, along with most of his upper torso and a big chunk of the wall behind him. Was anyone else bothered by the fact that both Marsh and the earring survived this intact? Sure, it would kill the plot if someone figured out they could turn anyone into chunky salsa just by Duralumin Pushing small objects, but the resulting visuals would be pretty cool.

I registered with this forum to start this topic so I might discuss a few questions that have been nagging me throughout my reading of Alloy of Law. I do not know if they have been expressed before but here goes: 1.) My understanding of AoL tells me that it is velocity, not momentum, that is conserved when an Iron Ferring fills or taps mass from his Ironminds. I infer this because if momentum were conserved, then the Ferring could use his increased strength when moving or Pushing/Pulling to change his velocity, then fill his Ironmind and take advantage of the conservation of momentum to increase his velocity to ridiculous levels. For example, this would allow the Ferring to jump while heavy, then decrease his mass to gain incredible velocity, or fall while light and increase his mass to stop in midair. Conversely, if velocity is conserved rather than momentum, why don't Iron Ferrings flare their mass in mid-swing to punch people out with the force of a freight train, knocking their opponents across rooms like ragdolls? Though that could easily be handwaved by saying the mass change only applies to yourself. 2.) My other question has to do with the required secondary powers of Iron Ferrings, namely increasing the force of their Pushes/Pulls and the strength of their own bodies proportionally with their current mass. In AoL, we see Wax commenting on how his body's strength must be greater to cope with his increased mass; we also witness how this applies to his Steelpushing at several times, most notably in the explosion sequence where a brief period of mass-enhanced Steelpushing flattens the nails in his house and in the ending sequence where he greatly increases his mass and uses the increased strength of his Steelpushing to crush a building by ripping all the metals down. My question is why doesn't this apply the other way around? I think I remember seeing Wax decrease his mass and Push behind him for high velocity jumps, but this shouldn't be possible if Push force scales with mass. The narration also mentions that Wax constantly keeps himself at 3/4 mass to make himself nimbler. Considering Sanderson's love for logically limited magic systems, why don't we ever see Wax's lower mass proportionally decreasing his strength? For that matter, if strength only scales up with mass, why don't Iron Ferrings ever think to achieve true flight with crafted wings? It seems to me that in a more physically plausible 'verse where momentum is conserved between mass changes, many more tricks would have been possible with Iron Ferrings than are shown. Even velocity conservation could have been exploited in ways that weren't shown even in a book featuring a Crasher. I love the magic system Sanderson has created in the Mistborn novels, it presents so many opportunities for interesting storytelling that I don't understand how it's not more popular with fanfiction writers. I also don't think Sanderson misses many opportunities to squeeze some more plot out of his magic systems, which is why I am perplexed to find potentially unexplored aspects of a power combo he has dedicated an entire protagonist to.