A new theory about iron feruchemy

[DrPhysics he/him]

4 hours ago, Koloss17 said:

what happens to your movement when storing? I would think you get some amount faster due to muscles needing to push less than usual

There's mixed evidence on what happens. Wax often runs around at 3/4 weight because it makes him "lighter on his feet, quicker to react", but he also talks about how increasing his weight must increase his strength, because he doesn't crush himself and doesn't seem to have a hard time moving around at increased weight. So, it turns out that "the magic be weirder than that."

[Thorneater]

On 10/25/2023 at 6:21 AM, DrPhysics said:

There's a big piece of information that is missing from this discussion. You are all forgetting that the mass has to come from/go to somewhere,  and that some where has a speed. If you set that speed so that it is zero in what is considered "at rest" for the feruchemist,  it fixes all of these problems

Yeah but you can tap the metalmind in a specific time or 12 hours later and your momentum by the solar system's frame of reference will be in the opposite direction and still you won't be affected differently from the momentum that the mass in the metalmind has.(And in my first suggestion I referred to the fact that the mass comes from somewhere as a possible solution.)

[DrPhysics he/him]

17 minutes ago, Thorneater said:

Yeah but you can tap the metalmind in a specific time or 12 hours later and your momentum by the solar system's frame of reference will be in the opposite direction and still you won't be affected differently from the momentum that the mass in the metalmind has.(And in my first suggestion I referred to the fact that the mass comes from somewhere as a possible solution.)

That still assumes that the storing process conserves the momentum of whatever is stored. Momentum is only conserved when there are no external forces. You are converting mass into investiture and then investiture back into mass. Whatever that process involves, the end result is that mass leaving acts as if it is at rest with respect to whatever the feruchemist considers at rest, and mass entering the physical realm is also at rest with respect to whatever the feruchemist considers at rest. It doesn't matter when they stored it or what happens to the storage in between. It's the tapping/storing mechanism that changes the momentum of the tapped/stored mass.

We can tell that they aren't storing mass directly in their ironminds, otherwise, their ironminds would gain as much weight as they have stored. My best guess is they are storing the small amount of investiture needed to pull/deposit investiture as mass directly from the spiritual realm where things like distance and speed don't really make sense to talk about.

[Thorneater]

Of course we could just say that momentum is only conserved by the reference frame of the feruchemist, but that's too simple and kind of misses the point of conservation of momentum.

[therunner he/him]

On 10/25/2023 at 1:46 PM, DrPhysics said:

The investiture itself doesn't have to have momentum. We're dealing with an infinite energy supply that can increase/ decrease mass at will.

We are not dealing with infinite energy supply. Feruchemists have access only to what they store, which is very much finite.

Quote

Momentum is only conserved when there are no external forces, and that process could easily involve an external force.

Yeah, in which case momentum is not conserved in the 'mechanical' sense, but because the magic strips and adds momentum to the mass being stored/tapped as needed.

But like I said, it is an good solution to the frame of reference issue, it just means Investiture must do more work behind the scenes.

Edited October 26, 2023 by therunner

[IlstrawberrySeed]

2 hours ago, DrPhysics said:

We can tell that they aren't storing mass directly in their ironminds, otherwise, their ironminds would gain as much weight as they have stored. My best guess is they are storing the small amount of investiture needed to pull/deposit investiture as mass directly from the spiritual realm where things like distance and speed don't really make sense to talk about.

Their converting the mass into investiture and vice versa. Investiture has no weight or mass, so there is no issue storing in the metalmind.

And the "at rest" argument seems to work for me except with the fact that the relative motion is the same no matter the frame of reference. I'm definitely headconanizing this.

[DrPhysics he/him]

2 hours ago, IlstrawberrySeed said:

Their converting the mass into investiture and vice versa. Investiture has no weight or mass, so there is no issue storing in the metalmind.

When you shove that much energy into a confined space (especially so that it can't move) it will bend spacetime and start acting like it has mass (or just change forms so that it has mass). Some of the other books 

Spoiler

The Sunlit Man, especially

suggest that investiture follows the same rules, even if we don't know the exact conversion rate.

3 hours ago, therunner said:

We're dealing with an infinite energy supply that can increase/ decrease mass at will.

You're right.

I had a longer edit that talked about how the investiture stored in the metal mind would probably be just enough for them to access the spiritual realm for the extra mass they are storing/tapping (like priming a pump, you need a little bit of water to start it, but the bulk of the water is pulled from the ground), and just felt like too long of an answer.

The infinite energy supply referred to the amount of energy in the spiritual realm, and I didn't correct that when I cut out the extra. Oops.

[IlstrawberrySeed]

On 10/26/2023 at 2:51 PM, DrPhysics said:

When you shove that much energy into a confined space (especially so that it can't move) it will bend spacetime and start acting like it has mass (or just change forms so that it has mass). Some of the other books 

  Reveal hidden contents

The Sunlit Man, especially

suggest that investiture follows the same rules, even if we don't know the exact conversion rate.

You're right.

I had a longer edit that talked about how the investiture stored in the metal mind would probably be just enough for them to access the spiritual realm for the extra mass they are storing/tapping (like priming a pump, you need a little bit of water to start it, but the bulk of the water is pulled from the ground), and just felt like too long of an answer.

The infinite energy supply referred to the amount of energy in the spiritual realm, and I didn't correct that when I cut out the extra. Oops.

I disagree. I don't think Feruchemistry accesses the pool of investiture, though because I haven't read that book I couldn't provide arguments against the evidence presented there. The main reason I believe this is the inefficiency constant - Feruchemistry isn't 1 + 1i to 1 + 1i, it's 1 + 1i to 1 + 0.9i or 0.9 + 1i (Decimals truncated, go on as 9s for too many digits) (i is the investiture, R is time). If it converts attribute into Inves, uses that inves to pull from the SR and put some into the metalmind, and then uses that to access the SR Inves pool, then it is easier to say it's equal than inefficient.

 

(PS. I don't mind minor spoilers like that, it builds anticipation.)

[DrPhysics he/him]

On 10/31/2023 at 12:10 PM, IlstrawberrySeed said:

The main reason I believe this is the inefficiency constant

Couldn't you just apply the inefficiency constant to the process of storing/removing mass from the spiritual realm? So maybe priming the pump was a bad analogy. Instead, imagine it like an electrical relay. We use a little bit of investiture to open access, but keeping the access open uses up the stored investiture.

Really, the point I was trying to make was that if you literally stored all of the mass in the metalmind as investiture, you would see a large increase in the mass of the metalmind. If it follows an E=mc^2 like relationship as Brandon has said, then the metalmind's weight would increase just as much as the mass you stored, and storing mass would have no meaning. You'd still be just as heavy, it's just that some mass would be in the metal, and the rest would be in your body. Something else must be going on, and as far as what that something else is, your guess is as good as mine.

[IlstrawberrySeed]

21 hours ago, DrPhysics said:

Couldn't you just apply the inefficiency constant to the process of storing/removing mass from the spiritual realm? So maybe priming the pump was a bad analogy. Instead, imagine it like an electrical relay. We use a little bit of investiture to open access, but keeping the access open uses up the stored investiture.

Really, the point I was trying to make was that if you literally stored all of the mass in the metalmind as investiture, you would see a large increase in the mass of the metalmind. If it follows an E=mc^2 like relationship as Brandon has said, then the metalmind's weight would increase just as much as the mass you stored, and storing mass would have no meaning. You'd still be just as heavy, it's just that some mass would be in the metal, and the rest would be in your body. Something else must be going on, and as far as what that something else is, your guess is as good as mine.

I don't see how the inefficiency can be explained like that. With an infinite supply, they can simply store more investiture in the metalmind while storing to get the 1 to 1.

The issue is in part that Mass as we understand it isn't Mass as it is in the cosmere, since (as I probably misunderstand it) Mass and Matter are functionally equivalent for us, but it doesn't seem like it in the Cosmere, due to Iron feruchemistry keeping the same particles in the feruchemist. I'd contenue, but I have to go, and I do expect that I'm misunderstanding the Mass/Matter functional equivelence for some reason.

[DrPhysics he/him]

On 11/2/2023 at 10:36 AM, IlstrawberrySeed said:

Mass and Matter are functionally equivalent for us, but it doesn't seem like it in the Cosmere, due to Iron feruchemistry keeping the same particles in the feruchemist

I'd have to find the exact WOB, but he says that in the Cosmere matter, energy, and investiture are all equivalent, but doesn't want to put an exact E=mc^2 equation together because it would limit the storytelling.

[IlstrawberrySeed]

On 11/2/2023 at 9:36 AM, IlstrawberrySeed said:

I don't see how the inefficiency can be explained like that. With an infinite supply, they can simply store more investiture in the metalmind while storing to get the 1 to 1.

The issue is in part that Mass as we understand it isn't Mass as it is in the cosmere, since (as I probably misunderstand it) Mass and Matter are functionally equivalent for us, but it doesn't seem like it in the Cosmere, due to Iron feruchemistry keeping the same particles in the feruchemist. I'd contenue, but I have to go, and I do expect that I'm misunderstanding the Mass/Matter functional equivelence for some reason.

23 hours ago, DrPhysics said:

I'd have to find the exact WOB, but he says that in the Cosmere matter, energy, and investiture are all equivalent, but doesn't want to put an exact E=mc^2 equation together because it would limit the storytelling.

Not what I was saying.

(sorry for brusqueness, not trying to be rude, just fast)

Edited November 7, 2023 by IlstrawberrySeed