therunner

I do agree that someone with pewter and Gold-F could store that improved healing, or Steel-F could improved speed to store more. What I disagree with is that Nicrosil-F could pick and choose what part of A-pewter effect to store into the nicrosil, as 1) We do not know if they can store kinetic investiture at all. and 2) If they can, they can most likely only store it wholesale, not only part of it (i.e. if they had access to stormlight, they could not just store the better healing part but not the improved physical attributes part, they are both stormlight).

It wouldn't increase your weight, it just means you are supporting something with some weight. If I step on a scale holding a bar bell it does not make me magically heavier, it just means I am holding a bar bell, that weight does not belong to me at all. Feruchemists store their weight, not their weight + weight of all the things they happen to be holding/supporting. I explained twice already why that increase in mass is only perceived by stationary observer, and not actual one that would effect gravity and therefore weight. So again, speed does not actually increase the weight of object. I meant the incident at the end of Alloy of Law, as BenduLuke specified (quoted below) The passage from the book is below: "He made himself incredibly light and Pushed more strongly off the nails below. The two of them shot up through the hole he’d made, propelled some forty or fifty feet into the air. [...] Wax drew every bit of weight he had left, draining his metalminds completely. That was hundreds upon hundreds of hours of weight, enough to make him crush paving stones if he tried to walk on them. In the strange way of Feruchemy, he didn’t grow more dense— bullets would still cut through him easily if they hit. But with this incredible conflux of weight, his ability to Push grew incredible. He used that weight to Push downward with everything he had. There were numerous lines of metal below. Nails. Doorknobs. Guns. Personal effects. The building trembled, then undulated, then ripped apart as every nail in its frame was driven downward as if propelled by a rotary gun. There was an enormous crash. The building was crushed down into the railroad tunnel on top of which it had been built. The weight was gone from him in an instant, compounded upon itself in that moment, his metalminds drained all at once. Wax let gravity take him, and he dropped through the mists,..." Alloy of Law, pg. 302 Reading the passage now, he mentioned his ability to push grows when tapping Iron, and in this specific case he destroys the building by pushing on all the metal in it, which seems to be mainly nails holding it together. So it is less that he crushed the building, more that he quite forcefully removed the nails holding it together, and that combined with the pushes on the metal items was enough to make it crash. In the book he mentions a lot that weight matters when it comes to pushing. In the same passage he himself mentions that his density does not increase as bullets still go through him. Also when he destroys the building he is above it, not inside so it makes sense he is not at all hurt from its destruction, and when he drops he already depleted his metalminds, so he is no longer tapping them. As to why he did not do that in BoM, maybe he did not have enough stored? Or he did not think of in the moment? The way it is used is more as quite crude tool, and to catch the falling water tower would require some precision (so that it does not break), which he might not be capable of. And when he crashed through the floor, he pushes on the nails below to slow his fall and stops tapping the metalmind after he falls through, to quote: "He became heavy as a boulder, then as heavy as a building, then heavier. All this weight was focused on one small section of the floor. The wood crunched, then burst, exploding downward.[...] He released his metalmind and Pushed against the nails in the floor below them, trying to slow himself and Marasi. He didn’t have enough time to do it well. They crashed into the floor of the next story down, and something heavy landed on them, driving the breath from Waxillium’s lungs. There was glaring brightness and a burst of heat. Then it was over. Waxillium lay dazed, ears ringing. [...] The floor beneath them had been crushed practically to splinters, the nails flattened to little disks. Part of his downward Push must have been while he still had the increased weight." Alloy of Law, pg. 166-167. So we know that they fell 1 floor (being generous 3-4 meters), he was not tapping metalminds when crashing into the floor, he used steel push to slow their fall and finally, Marasi herself is mostly okay despite having no power at all. (also Wayne took the brunt of explosion when he fell on top of them). Even without slowing down and assuming they fell 4m, they would be only falling for ~0.9 seconds, so when hitting the ground they would be moving at ~30 km/h, which while painful can be managed if you fall right (I once fell 4 meters and hit my head on concrete pavement, I was knocked out for ~40 seconds and could not move for another ten, but then I had no issue walking around, just my head hurt a bit. I got taken to hospital, but I had no concussion and was pretty much okay roughly four hours later). Taken together, his being okay after fall cannot be due to some increase in resiliency due to metalminds (he already released them) and most likely is due him slowing them down enough combined with a bit of luck.

Yes, as the force increases beyond the limits of the forces binding the tissues together, specifically when the stress in material overcomes the ultimate tensile strength (usually given in terms of pressure/stress, but easily converted to forces for practical applications). For human head, that limit is generally around 5000N, so 100 earth-gravity lashing are required at minimum. Also rack generally lead to dislocations, not separation. If you increase the pressure, you are increasing the force, lashings impart force (redirected/magnified gravitational force) -> i.e. you would need more lashings, not just lashings for longer period. We do not yet know restrictions on soulbearers, but that does not mean there are none. What has been shown so far (and confirmed in WoBs) is that they can store ability to use investiture, i.e. they store parts of their spiritweb, their innate investiture, not just any investiture. And they cannot store physical attributes because that is not the power of feruchemical nicrosil. The fact that f-tin allows to store different senses in different minds at best implies that nicrosil ferring with both lets say Breath and A-Iron could store into one minds the Breath and into the other A-iron, but to say that they can also use it to store strength/balance etc goes wildly beyond that. If they can also store kinetic investiture, then I think they would just store the investiture keyed to A-Pewter as a whole, so they would get the whole effect at once, not just part of it, so they could not pick and choose.

I am sorry but no, pushing something above you does not increase your weight. Sure the ground under you experiences greater pressure (due to your weight + due to pressure from you pushing something above you) but that has absolutely nothing to do with weight (weight = force/magnitue of force acting on object due to gravity). So your weight does not change at all, as when you push something neither gravity nor your mass changes. I know the definition and units of energy and mass. Mass is at rest in its rest frame, by definition. The increase in mass is only from perspective of observer at rest (relative to the moving object). Speed will not increase detectable mass, as gravity must be frame invariant (per general relativity) and if speed increased gravitational mass, then you could use gravity to differentiate object moving with constant speed from the stationary ones, violating principle of relativity (concrete example, an object could move fast enough that to external observer it should become black hole by having sufficient energy density, but in a frame of reference moving with the object the mass did not increase, so it did not become black hole -> the increase in mass is only apparent, not actual). So again no, speed does not actually increase mass, the perceived increase in mass of object moving at relativistic speeds is simply due to Lorentz transformation to the frame of observer at rest. What is measured in fighter jets, rockets and formula 1 cars is just force on the driver due to acceleration of the jet/rocket/formula car, nothing else, not all mass*acceleration is weight. I think the example where Wax taps his ironminds and then pretty much flattens a building goes against your reasoning here. If he had that raw power normally he should have no problem throwing small things around at nearly supersonic speeds, which he doesn't. I think the key difference here is that the physical strength is determined by muscles, while the strength of the push/pull is determined by metaphorical allomantic muscles, and we do not know what those are precisely. I think that somehow those depend on both innate potential and allomancers mass, so strenght of push/pull ~ allomancer mass*innate allomantic strength. The allomancer mass explains why Wax was able to crush a building with his push when tapping, and the innate allomantic strength explains why Vin was so surprisingly strong (ditto for that one inquisitor). Ultimately though, we might be running here into the limitations that it is a story and not a fully realized consistent universe, so a fully consistent explanation might not necessarily exist.

That is not how that works, you need to generate force greater than the force holding the tissue together to tear the tissue, so applying smaller force for longer time would not be sufficient. Soulbearers store their ability to use investiture (as far as we know at this point), i.e. static investiture, and there is no evidence they could "cut up" a given power into multiple components. They best they could do is store their ability to use A-pewter wholesale, and while storing they would have no allomancy, while tapping they would have it. Also they could not use feruchemy to enhance those attributes, as they do not have those feruchemical powers, and so they would not be able to store those attributes.

I do not think that would be possible, just having additional force pushing him down would not do anything to his weight, that would be like saying having an elephant standing on your head makes you heavier. That would be an interesting synergy, I think it depends on if it is possible to send investiture through those connections or not. It is a bit more complicated than that, total energy increases with velocity, and you can then convert that to mass using E=mc^2, and call resulting mass relativistic. However the rest mass is still the same (and that is what is being acted upon by gravity, per equivalence principle), so weight is caused by rest mass, not total energy (again actually it is bit more complicated, but ultimately different reference frames must produce same effects, so speed of someone cannot effect their weight). At first I would think that the steelrunner should be able to store that speed, as they are moving with the jet. However, this gets complicated with lets say trains, as it should let them store the speed of the train, and this effect would already be noticeable in Era 2 and I do not think anyone mentioned that.

I at first thought the same, but at the same time if what is stored is lets say "10 kg/day" and to tap faster you need to sort of "fold" it (in the WoB Brandon uses the word compound, which i want to avoid) to get more out of it, which costs some energy. Going along with this to tap slower then stored, you need to "thin" it out. Honestly I also mostly think that to tap slower does not result in diminished capacity, but I though it is good to mention. I would say that it makes sense that F-gold would not suffer from the speculated limitation, as it works by restoring the physical self to spiritual ideal (filtered through cognitive). You can never be more like your ideal self, so in this sense F-gold would not create tension between spiritweb and physical self (as it does not change you from your spiritweb but towards your spiritual ideal). I do agree that these 'material' limitations are sufficiently high to not affect Compounding. That is why I wanted to focus on the more spiritual limitations (in line with Lord Ruler and atium) and on the potential diminishing returns due to limitations of Feruchemy itself.

Hello, I was wondering about upper limits on the compounding. From the case of Lord Ruler we know that even with compounding atium you cannot maintain youth indefinitely, due to your spiritweb "knowing" the proper age, and eventually even compounding cannot provide enough f-charge to maintain the effect. Also, Sazed states that feruchemy gives diminishing returns, with WoB (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/243-hero-of-ages-qa-time-wasters-guide/#e6126) making it sound like that the diminishing returns appear only if you tap "faster" then when storing (does this also inversely imply that taping slower than storing also produces diminished effect, with some investiture being used to "stretch out" the charge?) Combined, I was wondering if this implies some sort of upper limit on the compounding, i.e. that the amount of f-attribute gained when tapping *-mind eventually tapers out to some maximum amount, which it approaches in the limiting case of infinite feruchemical charge in the *-mind. From Lord Ruler we know such limitation exists for atium, so I wonder if some other attributes might exhibit either this limitation due to spirit web, or due to potential diminishing returns of feruchemy. In cases where this limitation would be applicable, it would mean that while compounding is exponential for producing f-charge, for the purpose of actually using the attribute it behaves more like scaled logistic function.

Thanks for this correction, I knew Roshar has weaker gravity but when writing I did not bother to look it up, my fault. Although I would argue that my calculation from the Pursuer incident still holds, so Windrunner on fourth oath should be capable of creating r-lashing imparting acceleration of ~1000 m/s^2 . I also wonder, would lashings on a different planet be imparting acceleration based on that planets acceleration on surface? I tried to look for some WoBs but I was not able to find anything.

I would also point out two things: 1) If tapping weight made appreciabale difference to density (even if only with compounding) then storing lets say 95% of weight should then decrease durability considerably (we have WoB that becoming weightless is impossible, but coming very close probably isn't you would just get diminishing returns), and someone should have noticed that. 2) The durability argument also has the issue that most of durability does not come from mass of atoms/molecules, but from the bonding energy, which should not increase by tapping weight (this is complicated by them being able to handle the increased mass without breaking bones). In my mind it works roughly that the body itself does not know its effective mass increased (through some spiritual realm shenanigans), so it can move as usual without breaking, but for external things the body is much heavier. I.e. only its external connections (to ground, others, etc.) are affected, not ones internal to body.

Thanks for the reply and the details on Sazed, it has been a while since I read HoA. I know it imparts enough strength/resistance to allow the body to handle the increased weight, but the WoB I linked seems to imply to me that somehow this resistance does not extended to external threats (bullets, knives). However the quote from Sazed can be read that the increased density does protect him to some extent, although it could also be read that it simply allows him to fall without breaking his bones under his weight (this used to be a big problem for theropods, likeT-Rex, if they fell they would most likely break some bone). I do agree that ultimately there is no scientific theory that would fully describe it as it is literature after all, I was interested in the density argument as it came up in some speculations on the topic of compounders. And seeing no mention of it in the arcanum that was quoted I though I would ask.

There are two kinds of strength talked about, allomantic strength and strength of pushes/pulls. Allomantic strength comes from how close a connection to preservation they have (in the sense of modification of spiritweb, not in sense of ideals) and affect how much you can perceive and how much control you have (i.e. how small/detailed things you can effect). In this sense compounders are weaker the Lerasium mistborn, and no amount of compounding will change that, their base strength is what they were born with (barring adding hemalurgic spikes). Also note that even though Marsh could see trace metals, he could not affect them, even though he was/is one of the strongest Metalborn due to his spikes. Quote " Almost everything had metal in it - water, stone, glass... even human bodies.These metals were too diffuse to be affected by Allomancy - indeed, most Allomancers couldn't even sense them."" Strength of individual pushes/pulls is affected by both allomantic strength and by weight of the user, here I-compounder could use compounding to overcome their comparative allomantic weakness to generate stronger pulls. So while compounders can generate stronger pushes/pulls, they cannot affect trace metals, so stone/glass/water/bodies is a no go for them.

Hello, when going through the article on Iron (https://coppermind.net/wiki/Iron) I noticed that in the section on Feruchemical use it says the following: "An iron Ferring is known as a Skimmer. Iron is used to store physical mass, or more accurately, density." and quotes the Alloy of Law Ars Arcanum (citation [2]) for it, however when going through my copy of Alloy of Law, no mention of density was made. Are there multiple version of Alloy of Law with different Ars Arcanum? Also, in combination with this WoB https://wob.coppermind.net/events/40-the-alloy-of-law-annotations/#e692 which is also quoted in the Feruchemical Use section, which says : " I acknowledge that the weight manipulation aspect of Feruchemy is one of its more baffling powers, scientifically. Is he changing his mass? If so, he should become more dense, which I don't actually make the case when it plays out in fights. (Otherwise, increasing his weight enough would make him impervious to bullets." I think the case is that F-Iron while F-Iron stores weight, somehow that does not translate to any effective change in density (which admittedly does not make much sense considering the definition of density), so I think the mention of storing density should be removed.

While steel does conduct electricity, that does not translate to shielding well against beta radiation. For comparison, speed of electrons due to electric current is ~10^-6 m/s, whereas electrons in beta radiation are generally relativistic with speed of order ~10^6-10^7 m/s, so even if the steel was under voltage, the resulting change in speed would be negligible. Also steel shields well against gamma radiation, not beta (although of course sufficiently thick layer would be still provide protection, however that might make it impractically heavy). So if I understand you correctly, the I-compounder would have beryllium mirror/target on their chest and they would pull the hydrogen/deuterium/tritium against that to create sufficient pressure to ignite fusion? So the process would be tap weight (to increase strenght of pulls, and root yourself), pull fuel to the chest, and hope that the fusion explosion ignited at best centimeters from you will not kill you? There are other issues with this, for example with using deuterium or tritium as a fuel is that one product of the fusion are high energy neutrons, which are very difficult to shield against. Also while the beryllium is heat resistant, I strongly doubt it could withstand being the source of pressure for the fusion without also fusing, or if the fusion started short distance from it, even without melting (i know they are using beryllium in ITER, but there you have at least few kgs of beryllium meant to withstand 10-100 miligrams of plasma, not the full brunt of it), eg. specific heat of berrylium is 1925 J/(Kg*K), so to heat 1 kg by 1 K you need to provide ~2kJ, however hydrogen gas has specific heat 14kJ/(kg*K), so the berryllium would heat up faster than the hydrogen would cool down -> it would most likely melt then evaporate and join in the fusion, so the mirror would be immediately completely destroyed. Even with concave chamber, it would need to happen incredibly fast, so that the gas does not escape on the edges, but this might be resolved by doing multiple pulls at once. While Be can be used as neutron reflector, the mechanism is different from mirrors, what it does is that the incoming neutrons are scattered on Be atoms, and so now can go in any direction. Practical result is that incident neutron has ~50-50 chance of being reflected, but the rest still passes through, albeit now slower. While the coppermind says that density is stored, it cites Alloy of Law Ars Arcanum for that, however at least in my copy of Alloy of Law there is no mention of density, only of storing weight to effectively decrease/increase weight, so to me it seems that there is a mistake in coppermind. You should also note that the very same coppermind you shared actually says that despite in increase in density, this has no effect on penetration, quoting the WoB (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/40-the-alloy-of-law-annotations/#e692) I quoted as well. Sanderson specifically says the following: "At the same time, I acknowledge that the weight manipulation aspect of Feruchemy is one of its more baffling powers, scientifically. Is he changing his mass? If so, he should become more dense, which I don't actually make the case when it plays out in fights. (Otherwise, increasing his weight enough would make him impervious to bullets.) So, if it's not mass manipulation, is it gravity manipulation, like Szeth and Kaladin do? Well, again, not really—as when his weight increases, his strength and ability to uphold that weight increase as well. Beyond that, Wax can't make himself so light that he has no weight at all. " In between the WoB above, and the fact that Ars Arcanum cited in the article actually does not mention density, it seems to me your assumption about increased density imparting increased resistance is not correct, and without this assumption the I-compounder has no way of surviving the explosion. I do admit that just basic definition of density =mass/volume should effectively make it that storing weight -> storing density, but in this magic system it does not seem to play out that way. To address the reverse lashings cannon, it is true that reverse lashing are more effective on items not touching ground, however this limitation is easily overcome by putting the cannon on Navani's floating platforms. When it comes to strength of r-lashing, force required to tear a human head off is estimated to be around 5000 N, human head weighs 5 kg, and since Parshendi have carapace, we can take these as a good lower bound on estimation. So to tear a human head off you would need around 100 r-lashings (assuming 10m/s^2), and thanks to Pursuer we know Windrunner can do this (in fact probably more than this, accounting for carapace of Parshendi). So with a 10m long cannon you would need just 2 windrunners to shoot almost anything at speed 200 m/s (assuming enough stormlight, I also assume that having r-lashing act on heavier object would cause it to deplete faster). This cannon would be especially fun in space, as having a long cannon run the length of a ship, ~100m would make for a devastating weapon (although at that point they would most likely have better ways of achieving this goal). Also with r-lashing requiring to maintain contact, the way it is written in RoW ("Kaladin turned and strode towards Heavenly Ones, as the Pursuer's head ripped from his body and slammed to the floor.") seems to me that it lingers for a bit even after breaking contact, although it is not exactly clear in this passage.

I see how steel armor can be used as a metal mind, I do not see how that is supposed to help with beta radiation as you state: As I stated in my previous post, to shield against beta radiation you would prefer lighter metals, to prevent appearance of braking radiation, which would be more dangerous, so steel would not work too well. Thanks for this, I was misremembering how mass of user affects pulls/pushes. The way I see it now the I-compounder could achieve sufficient strength to provide enough energy to theoretically create and ignite plasma (#CompoundingIsBrokenAF), but the problem is still how to concentrate that energy in one spot. The only place they can pull towards is themselves, and to prevent the hydrogen from escaping due to collisions they would need to pull from all sides the same way, putting them straight in the center of now ignited nuclear fusion explosion, which would kill them on the spot. Also Wax states that tapping weight does not increase his density, as bullets still easily pass through him (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/40-the-alloy-of-law-annotations/#e692), so tapping weight does not increase their resistance to damage, therefore that would not help them survive the fusion explosion centered on their location. Altogether, now i agree that I-compounders have enough energy output to ignite fusion, but mechanically they have no way to put that energy in one spot without killing themselves, due to limitations of pushes/pulls to a straight line from user to metal. To address the part with mirrors, in Deuterium and Tritium reactions most energy (between 66%-80%) is released in form of neutrons not photons, so most energy would be wasted. Also, even in more suitable reactions (like the Hydrogen-Hydrogen or Hydrogen-Helium) the photons released are gamma rays, and those cannot be reflected of mirrors due to their short wavelength. These rounds are just evil, and tactically brilliant. Just one potential issue, do we know if even chemical compounds containing aluminum inhibits invested healing? I would think that yes they still do, but if not then having aluminum ignite would not provide the desired effect. True, I got a bit of a tunnel vision on the reverse lashing. But post facto rationalization, reverse lashings use the least amount of light, making them more efficient (and potentially allowing this artillery to fire more rounds before requiring restocking with spheres). EDIT: Also, the reverse lashing seems to be stronger than basic lashing (the whole ripping Pursuers head off incident), so for less light you get more acceleration, again increasing effectivness.

I mentioned fusion to fully address possibility of nuclear explosions. I also do not see how Iron compounders would have a possibility of igniting fusion, A-Iron allows them to pull metals to themselves along a straight line and F-Iron allows them to store/tap their weight, neither of which would allow them to create conditions extreme enough to ignite fusion (note that lithium fusion requires much more energy to get going than even hydrogen fusion, and that is already quite extreme). The best I can think of is suicide attack where they do one incredibly strong pull on hydrogen from all directions at once, with themselves at center, but I seriously doubt they would be strong enough to ignite fusion. (assuming 100% efficiency, to fuse 1 microgram of Hydrogen they would need to pull with force ~10^5-10^6 Newtons, for energy output ~10kg of TNT, that is strong enough to completely cancel gravity on ~10 ton object for the duration of the pull, for lithium there is at least 6 times as much force needed). So small explosions are from energy standpoint doable, but you still have the issue of how to actually put all that energy in one place, the pulls are only linear so the only intersection of multiple pulls from one user is the user himself, so they would kill themselves with this attack. While particle beam might split some atoms (emphasis on might) it would not be able to start chain reaction needed for nuclear explosions. The control itself would be needed to just create the particle beam, but after that physics takes over and they cannot really effect if any given collision will result in emission of neutron at correct speed. Simply put, nuclear collisions are not enough to start nuclear explosions,as atomic collision generally do not result in fission (the collision is generally due to electromagnetic interaction), as energetically it is easier for the incoming particle to knock the other atom away, instead of first fusing together and then falling apart. It is true that alpha particles are not too dangerous, as they can be mostly shielded by just sufficient layer of air, I just wanted to list it for completness. Also what do you mean by stating that beta particles can conducted by steel? For shielding from beta radiation, lighter elements are better, so steel armor might actually be worse for the user (as the beta radiation might cause emission of x-ray/gamma radiation due to braking in the material). And as you state, it is true that at the point where now about nuclear explosions they would be able to devise protective clothing. May I ask for link on that WoB? I am curious about his wording. And in spirit of speculation, Windrunners might be able to create simple "guns/railguns" as follows: Take a long tube, put ammunition in one end, and then coat the other with a bunch of strong reverse lashings that will attract the ammunition (as reverse lashing seem to just act on object the users wants it to). When the ammunition leaves the tube, cancel the reverse lashing (this would the difficult part to time right, unless they found a way to automate it). The good thing about lashing is that they directly impart acceleration, so to accelerate heavier object you "just" need more stormlight. As an example, to accelerate arbitrary object to ~100 m/s (assuming enough stormlight) you would need about 50m long tube and put down 10 r-lashing ( or 5 m long tube and 100 r-lashings, longer tubes are better for timing the end, and I assume strength of one lashing to be ~10m/s^2).

I was thinking about that as well, but in addition to their slower burn rate I would also think that most coins would not be made from material which is allomatically viable (i.e. the alloys would have wrong ratio). Of course this assumption could be wrong, but if I was in charge of treasury I would not want to make coinage which people could burn away. So Rosharans counterfeits would first need to be smelted down and purified before they would become viable, which might not be economically viable.

Thank you for the WoB @Frustration Reading it, it seems to me that what he counts as metals are the elements usually considered metals in chemistry, i.e. alkali, alkaline earth metals (i.e. "things over on the side with cesium"), transition and post-transition metals ("most right there" refering to things next to iron and gold). Although the note on him going through periodic table going "yes, no, yes, no" suggests that even some of those might not count. This then suggests that most elements comprising organic compounds cannot be pushed/pulled (barring some exceptions). Hydrogen though straddles the line, as some count it among alkali metals (due to its orbitals) but most do not.

Economic warfare is definitely a novel way of approaching this conflict. To me it seems that Roshar would be less affected than Scadrial, as the gems can be used up by fabrials, or by surgebinders, as with repeated use they seem to crack/fracture to smaller parts which are less valueable. If then they cannot obtain enough gemhearts to replenish the losses (say due to increase in use due to warfare/increasing industrial use of fabrials) the gems as currency become deflationary. In this case Scadrials attampted attack might end up benefiting Rosharans.

@Serack I am aware of metallic phase of hydrogen. As you mention I mostly wanted to mention hydrogen as it exists presently in environment (i.e. mostly as gas, in compounds or potential as liquid). To me it seems unlikely that whether an element counts as metal for purposes of Metallic arts depends on its phase, although it is possible as I am not aware of any statements that would go against it. Do we have any details on allomancers pushing/pulling on melted metals or metals in gaseous form?

Hello, long time lurker here I do not wish to seem rude, however it seems to me you @BenduLukeSo I would like to correct those misconceptions. are working from flawed understanding of real world physics, which in my opinion leads you to indefensible conclusions. First, they would definitely be unable to produce lasers, as that would require manipulating light not metals, also as they require light to be in coherent state you cannot just focus preexisting light from other sources to make lasers. I also doubt even matter laser would be possible as just accelerating bunch of particle would not make coherent beam necessary for that, you cannot use steelpushes (which seem to just manipulate momentum) to make them share the same quantum state. Regular beam of metallic particles might be possible, however in my opinion it would require incredible fine control, on the level of Steel Inquisitors or beyond, to make all the individual particles have the same speed. Also they would not be able to start nuclear explosions, that requires uncontrolled chain reaction, which is started by for example uranium capturing neutron and then decaying. Just hitting an uranium atom with another atom would at best just break it down, without releasing slow neutrons necessary to start chain reaction. In principle they could simulate the old-school atom bomb like Little Boy where you fire uranium bullet into uranium core, but those would have to be prepared and they would need to fire are correct speeds (too slow and it blows apart before fission uses it all up, too fast and you break up the target). They would most likely be able to create dirty bombs though, which would in my opinion nicely complement the fact that metalborn seem more suited for more clandestine work, and they could use the prepared Little-boy like devices to achieve that. Fusion is also non starter in my opinion, as even if Hydrogen counts as metal, you would need to continuously push against the pressure of the reaction and replenish fusion fuel. Also you would need multiple Coinshots acting in concert, because if you would push just from one direction, the hydrogen would simply escape in the direction you are not pushing in. Also they could not shield themselves from radiation, alpha-radiation are helium nuclei so not metals (as helium does not seem to possess metallic phase), beta-radiation are electron/positrons so again not metals and finally gamma-radiation is just light. Steel bubble could however protect them from radiation fallout, so they would hopefully not breathe in radioactive particles. EDIT: Also I think we can in fact assume that hydrogen does NOT count as metal, for the following reason: Human body is composed mainly of water, and based on wikipedia hydrogen forms ~10% of human body by weight or ~60% of human body by atomic count. If hydrogen counted as metal, then for Steel Inquisitors human bodies should light up like christmas tree (assuming metal sight is based on individual particles) which they seemingly do not, as the amount of hydrogen should overwhelm any other metals.