Potential Energy Magic System

[HellionHeloise]

In my WIP I have created a hard magic system (I'm hoping to come up with some "soft magic" elements that are more unknown and mystical later) that I would love feedback on concerning obvious flaws you may see that I don't. So, please feel free to critique it! Below is a summary of the magic system.

Magic is passed down genetically, but the society this is set in is not scientifically advanced enough to understand the nuances of genetics. Thus, it appears to be passed down by certain families, but there are some generations that are skipped & sometimes it seems as though it appears randomly.

Those with the inherited ability to perform magic come into their magical abilities during puberty.

The Source
All magical acts are connected to sources of potential energy. People who can perform magic have the ability to duplicate that potential energy and harness it for their own devices. Thus, practitioners are not "stealing" the potential energy, nor can they destroy the potential energy, they can only duplicate it from existing sources.

What is potential energy?
I'm using the definition used in Physics. Potential energy is any stored energy & there are many types. Chemical Potential Energy would be like the energy found in a battery. There is also electrical potential energy, which is not understood very well in this world either. The one I will use the most in this book, since the society does not understand chemical potential energy is gravitational potential energy. This is energy that is stored due to an object's position. It is dependent on the mass of the object, the height of the object above the ground or Earth, and the acceleration due to gravity. I will also use elastic potential energy, which is like the energy of a stretched rubber band.

How is magic performed?
1) The practitioner must identify a source of potential energy, either from their surroundings or from within his/herself (sources of potential energy from yourself usually have more to do with chemical potential energy & is less understood in this world, but you can also use gravitational PE like jumping & using energy from the fall). OR the practitioner must make a source of potential energy (I'll explain that later).
2) Once the potential energy source is found, then the practitioner has to use his/her intense mental focus to see & understand the energy, which is a very metaphysical experience--think out of body-- & then focus that energy into some action.
3) The action performed is going to be directly related to the amount of potential energy identified. For example, if a practitioner pulls back an arrow when using a bow & arrow (elastic potential energy), then the magical act he/she can perform will only be as impactful as the energy available. They could maybe use magic to make the arrow point true to the target or enhance its speed, but would not be able to do anything large.

How do surroundings impact magic performed?
-Physical surroundings strongly influence one's ability to find sources of potential energy. In a desert it will be harder to find potential energy, than if you were next to a river where you can use the gravitational energy from the current, etc. One of the best ways to use your surroundings is to harness the electrical potential energy of a lightening storm, then you can perform large magical acts.
-You can make sources of potential energy yourself by creating "potential energy traps." For example, you could set up a bunch of heavy objects ready to fall & use the gravitation potential energy of those large objects to perform magic.

These potential energy traps results in a "steam punk" kind of vibe to the story, because the most talented practitioners are those people who are clever enough to identify sources or make them themselves. They are almost like simple machine engineers in a way.

Also, any acts performed are limited to physical things. You cannot perform a magical act that will influence someone's thoughts, only someone's surroundings. You can physically heal people, but only up to a point.

Is this way too complicated? What flaws do you see?

Cheers,

HellionHeloise

 

[Geo]

Ok. I think it's a pretty interesting system but you need to think about (if you haven't already) what would happened with the chemical/physical process once you have used the PE.

For example, let's say that I'm in an arid place and I need to used magic asap (bad guys after me or whatever). There is a boulder at the top of a hill and I decided to use its PE to do magic. I go to the top of the hill, kick the boulder to destabilize it to a point where it's about to roll down, and extract all the corresponding PE. I transform the PE (meaning I duplicate it and turn it into a death ray), and used it. Blast the bad guys and I saved.

Now, my questions are

(1) I'm an Using 1. only as much energy as I managed to duplicate, 2. all the PE energy, 3. taking a bit of the original PE plus all the extra I duplicated, 4. it all depends of the circumstances?

(2) If I'm using ALL the energy, what happens to the falling boulder? does it stays put, not rolling down until the PE recharges? does PE recharges?

(3) Does the amount of energy I create (managed to increase) depends on my abilities or is a semi-standard thing? Meaning, if I'm super good at this thing I can get a blasting ray from a falling pebble but if I'm terrible I can't even get a bunny out of a hat by dropping an elephant down the Grand Canyon, or as good as I may get the more I can do is get twice the energy?

Anyhow, I think you have a solid an interesting system and probably you have already thought about this questions just that is not all there because it would be too long to write at once.

 

[HellionHeloise]

Geo, thanks for the questions.

(1) You're using only as much energy as you manage to duplicate, so the skill of the magic practitioner relates to how much of the energy a person can duplicate. The best practitioners will be able to duplicate all of the energy from that boulder's fall.
(2) If you end up using all the energy, the boulder still falls. This is why I specify that practitioners can duplicate potential energy, that means that the boulder will still fall b/c it still has that energy. You just also happen to have that exact amount of potential energy as well.
(3) The amount of energy directly relates to the source of potential energy. As I said before, the best practitioners will be able to harness the full potential energy of a source. But, let's say the best practitioner in the world uses the PE from pulling back a rubber band, they will only be able to do a small amount of magic. However, I think the best practitioner in the world would be extremely clever, so they would be able to use that small amount really efficiently.

I think using magic economically will be a key trait for the best practitioners. The showy magic isn't always the most efficient.

I should also specify that PE cannot be stored, you have to use it right away or you lose it. I hope this clears up your questions!

 

[Geo]

So, magic creates twice the energy and uses the half that has been "artificially" produced by the magician, and no matter what there's no more.
The think about being thrifty is interesting but for a moment I also imagined a system when your ability advances as you learn as to be able to triplicate or quadruplicate the original energy, or where some people had a "better" magic gift... so that some could get three times the PE while others get ten times (this since you mentioned about the genetic origin of magic).

 

[HellionHeloise]

Maybe this could be related to the soft magic aspect I am hoping to include?

Certain prodigious practitioners could be magnifying the energies they have access to in their surroundings & it's unexplained. I'll have to think on it.

 

[Vaporo]

Ok, I see some issues.

First of all, how often can this magic be used? Going to the boulder example a few posts ago, could a practitioner just copy the potential energy of the boulder ten thousand times and gain near-infinite energy, or does the focus required to perform the magic limit it to only periodically? That could be a factor that makes certain mages skilled and others unskilled. Skilled mages can copy the potential energy quickly, while unskilled mages can only copy energy slowly.

Second, why bother building a "potential energy trap" by hand when you could just make one with magic? A practitioner would just find a minor energy source, such as a rock that they have picked up, and use that source to pull rocks out of the ground and pile them up. Since they need no energy other than what their magic can produce, they can just keep exponentially expanding the pile until they've stored however much energy they need. You probably have a limit to how much energy a single wizard can copy at once, though, so this power would probably be limited to building small hills.

Third, and most importantly, your mages wouldn't need a boulder on a hill, running water, or anything at all if they can just copy potential energy from any source. Technically, a pebble at the bottom of the Dead Sea has an enormous amount of potential energy. It's just that it can't expend that energy because there's so much rock between it and the bottom of the earth's gravity well. A practitioner could just take the enormous potential energy from the surrounding ground as a source.

Potential energy is kind of a fuzzy, relative concept in physics. A rock hanging above the ground has potential energy relative to the earth. However, it has more potential energy relative to the sun, and even more relative to the black hole at the center of the galaxy. The concept could work, but I think that you have to think about it more first.

 

[HellionHeloise]

Thanks Vaporo, there are some questions here that I haven't considered.

Practitioners cannot copy potential energy multiple times. As of right now, they can only duplicate the energy so the example of the boulder falling means that the practitioner can only use that exact amount of energy. When I say duplicate I mean, they aren't just taking the PE b/c then the boulder would not fall, but they are able to copy the energy once & then harness how they wish. So, they are limited to the PE source. They have to use that energy within the next few seconds or lose it.

Maybe I need to figure out another way to word this/explain this in my writing b/c I've had a couple of questions about this.

The idea of the trap is that you build them when you have no energy sources. Does that mean there are no PE sources around? No, it means the practitioner might not be skilled enough to identify or sense the PE source. Some of the best practitioners are those who can sense PE sources. If you can physically see the PE source (oh, there's a bow and arrow I could use) or know enough about PE to reason out where a source is (I'm standing right by a water mill, so I can harness the water mill's endless loops of PE-gravitational PE). My MC becomes a formidable practitioner b/c she can sense PE sources so well. This is more of the "soft magic" aspect I'm referring to in my system. A practitioner's ability to sense PE sources is kind of mystical. Some people can really focus & have this out-of-body experience in which they sense the PE sources around them, but it's a rare gift.

The aspect you pointed out to me that I'm most thankful for is the geographical limit of using a PE source. You cannot harness the PE of something in relation to the sun. You can only harness the PE of something that you are within a one mile range of physically. I really appreciate this question, because I hadn't thought to specifically pint that done before.

Using magic to create potential energy traps is a great point as well. The way I see it, the times you need PE traps the most are when PE sources are so remote that you won't be able to find a source large enough to even harness the energy to make a trap. Or when you're bad at magic & need the traps as a crutch b/c you can't sense the PE sources around you well enough.

 

[HellionHeloise]

Woah, apologies for the long-winded responses here!

 

[Vaporo]

So, if energy can only be copied once, how would someone "reset" an object so that it can be used for energy harvesting again? Would someone have to lower the boulder to the ground, then bring it back up to the top of the hill? Or can potential energy only be copied as it is being converted to kinetic energy, and can't be copied while it is being stored? i.e The boulder has to start rolling downhill before it can be harvested for energy. If that's how it works then it clears up all of the issues I talked about before.

 

[HellionHeloise]

Yes! It can only be copied as it's converted to kinetic energy & it can't be copied while it's being stored. So, the boulder has to start rolling downhill before you can harness the energy.

Sorry, I'm so in this right now that I don't realize what important parts I'm leaving out in this explanation. This thread is really helping me understand what readers will need to know. Thanks

 

[Geo]

HellionHeloise, please correct me if I'm wrong, but what I understood is that wizards can only used the PE once it has been "liberated" meaning once PE is transformed into kinetic energy, and then, they used it by duplicating it, so that enough of the original energy remains to complete the process (for the object to fall, roll, etc).

In the terms used by my middle school physics teacher, energy can be harvested only when there is an unbalance in the forces acting over an object. Taking the pebble at the bottom of the ocean example from before, yes that pebble has a lot of PE (represented by its weight a.k.a mass x gravitational acceleration). However all of its weight is perfectly balanced by a force of equal magnitude but opposite direction (represented here as the inertia that keeps it planted at bottom of the sea) so there is no energy to harvest or transform into magic. A pebble falling across the ocean water column, that's a different story, because the vector that represents it's kinetic energy is in constant change, affected by the time it has been falling through the ocean, the density of the water and many more things, so that pebble becomes a very good source of magic energy.

Potential energy is kind of a fuzzy, relative concept in physics. A rock hanging above the ground has potential energy relative to the earth. However, it has more potential energy relative to the sun, and even more relative to the black hole at the center of the galaxy. The concept could work, but I think that you have to think about it more first.

First, I’m not complete sure and object on Earth would have more PE relative to a black hole at the center of the galaxy, because the gravitational attraction depends on both by the mass of the objects/bodies but also the distance between them, and while the black hole has a much larger gravitational pull it is also much farther.

Now, in a very nerdy note, because to harvest the energy the wizard has to have a serious meditation (the out-of-body-experience) wouldn't be reasonable to think that using a frame of reference subjective to the person extracting the magic it's better? What do I mean? That it is true, any object in the surface of our planet is affected by other gravitational sources than the Earth, hence it has other sources of PE than Earth's gravity, but those same forces are acting on the wizard itself. In such conditions the wizard could see/visualize the energy to be harvested better if he sees the movement of the object relative to himself (e.i., if the frame of reference used to estimate the movement is common to him and the object but not to the external forces), in other words if the X, Y, Z axis are placed at the surface of the planet and not in the center of the universe. And since reference’s subjective, you may think that a good wizard would used what it is easier.

 

[Vaporo]

All right. I read your description as "you can copy potential energy from any source regardless of whether it is at rest." This makes a lot more sense.

First, I’m not complete sure and object on Earth would have more PE relative to a black hole at the center of the galaxy, because the gravitational attraction depends on both by the mass of the objects/bodies but also the distance between them, and while the black hole has a much larger gravitational pull it is also much farther.

Yes, it certainly would have more potential energy relative to the black hole because it is so far away from the black hole. When you move an object away from a gravity well (up), it gains potential energy. So, because the rock is so far away from the black hole's immense gravity well, it has enormous potential energy, much more than it does relative to the earth. For the purpose of this magic system, though, this doesn't matter because the rock is not expending much very much energy relative to the black hole.

 

[RebelKeithy]

I created an account just to reply. I love physics and I like thinking about magic systems, so this is perfect.

One interesting thing I thought of. Take two magic users and a weight, drop the weight and each magician uses the PE to lift a weight twice the size. Then drop that weight and list one twice as big again. Repeat until you have enough PE to do whatever you want.

 

[Steerpike]

You've probably thought of this already, but since you're going for a hard, physics-based system, I'll point out that the duplication violates conservation of energy unless they're drawing it from somewhere outside the "system." Not that it matters for fantasy, but if you've gone to great detail in making the rest of it conform to physics, conservation of energy would be the first question that popped into my mind.

 

[HellionHeloise]

RebelKeithy, I love your ideas & may use them in my writing!

Steerpike, yes I have thought of this. It's set in a different world from ours, so I think it's okay that it violates the law of conservation, plus I think it's okay if magic can override certain laws of physics. It's obviously a pseudo-science kind of thing, but I'm cool with that. That's the mysterious "soft magic" aspect of it. Magic is bound to violate physics & that's the fun!

Also, I am not planning on laying all of these rules out to my readers like this anyway, I just want to really understand my parameters before I write scenes with magical duels, etc.

 

[Vaporo]

Couldn't a pendulum be used to create an effectively unlimited energy source?

 

[HellionHeloise]

Yes it could, Vaporo. That's where the simple machines/steam punk element comes in.

It's important to note that you have to use the energy once the conversion form potential to kinetic occurs, so you only have a few seconds to take advantage of your PE source or you can't copy it and use it yourself. And depending on how large/heavy this pendulum is most likely it will not be a huge source of energy. You could use a bunch of small magics continually theoretically speaking.

One good example of this PE continuum that is more powerful would be a water mill. These objects are very significant for those who know about and have the ability to practice magic in my WIP.

I'm by no means a Physics expert, so I've really appreciated everyone's questions/criticism/suggestions.