and spray transfigured engine exhaust all over the countryside
Presumably since the fuel/engine was transfigured out of water, it should turn into water vapor when the transfiguration runs out. And I wouldn’t expect inhaled engine exhaust to go anywhere water shouldn’t, so that shouldn’t be much of a problem.
Which reminds me—now that Harry has mastered partial Transfiguration, couldn’t he just start transfiguring stuff out of bubbles of air, thus making such stuff safe for any use short of injecting them in your arteries?
Harry already tried this in Ch. 28, failed, and concluded that it wasn’t possible to Transfigure things out of moving molecules. It’s safe to assume that he tried it again after (1) figuring out partial Transfiguration and (2) asking McGonagall, and found that it was still impossible; otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered touching his wand to the metal stairs to get his mirror.
Good enough as Word of God. (As a reader, I am reluctant to make “he would have thought about it” assumptions about a Harry who after five months still hasn’t shown curiosity or even confusion about his unique Quirrell-generated sense of doom).
The moving molecules thing doesn’t really make sense. Molecules are always moving. Is it more than a certain amount of average kinetic energy? If so temperature should matter more than state.
Molecules within a hot solid do that too. But rather than a maximum kinetic energy or temperature as JoshuaZ proposed, you can use a maximum relative displacement.
Edit: On second thought, maybe that’s already in what you said, in the word ‘significantly’. And now I notice that you wrote ‘orientation’ instead of ‘position’, so that actually changes the meaning entirely. Lesson: read carefully!
Presumably since the fuel/engine was transfigured out of water, it should turn into water vapor when the transfiguration runs out. And I wouldn’t expect inhaled engine exhaust to go anywhere water shouldn’t, so that shouldn’t be much of a problem.
Which reminds me—now that Harry has mastered partial Transfiguration, couldn’t he just start transfiguring stuff out of bubbles of air, thus making such stuff safe for any use short of injecting them in your arteries?
Harry already tried this in Ch. 28, failed, and concluded that it wasn’t possible to Transfigure things out of moving molecules. It’s safe to assume that he tried it again after (1) figuring out partial Transfiguration and (2) asking McGonagall, and found that it was still impossible; otherwise he wouldn’t have bothered touching his wand to the metal stairs to get his mirror.
Good enough as Word of God. (As a reader, I am reluctant to make “he would have thought about it” assumptions about a Harry who after five months still hasn’t shown curiosity or even confusion about his unique Quirrell-generated sense of doom).
The moving molecules thing doesn’t really make sense. Molecules are always moving. Is it more than a certain amount of average kinetic energy? If so temperature should matter more than state.
Molecules constantly significantly changing their spatial orientation relative to each other.
Molecules within a hot solid do that too. But rather than a maximum kinetic energy or temperature as JoshuaZ proposed, you can use a maximum relative displacement.
Edit: On second thought, maybe that’s already in what you said, in the word ‘significantly’. And now I notice that you wrote ‘orientation’ instead of ‘position’, so that actually changes the meaning entirely. Lesson: read carefully!
Since neither of us is McGonaggal the correct answer is “I do not know.” :-)