61:
So they plan to ward Askaban against “opposite reaction”. What would that even mean? Are they all going to fall down through the floor for lack of an opposite reaction pushing them up?
Hogwarts interferes with electrical devices, but brains still work.
There certainly seems to be a common thread in many magic worlds that “physics doesn’t work, but all the stuff physics causes that most people intuitively EXPECT to happen, still happen”
And it doesn’t simply degrade into bullshit because you think that you can explain why things work as expected for some physical reasons. You may have a certain level of reductionistic insight, you may expect things to stop behaving as usual, but magic is lawful, and so it continues working according to naïve physics, according to expectations of somebody who does not even pretend to understand world in physical terms.
Technology is (bastardized ancient) Greek for trickery. Electricity works, gravity works, macroscopic thermodynamic works. Counterintuitive trickery without Atlantis-issued license doesn’t.
They’ll probably just put in a ward preventing large objects from moving faster than a broomstick. That’s what they’re actually worried about, and it’s probably easier.
Heh, I just thought they’d find themselves unable to walk but that’s just horrific.
Then I realised that they wouldn’t fall as gravity is just the opposite reaction of their pull on the earth, so it’s okay.
Then I realised that the electromagnetic forces of the chemical bonds within their bodies all rely on opposite reaction, and it went back to horrific. Still, despite the tragic deaths that would result hopefully it would be made up for by all the prisoners who presumably would get somewhat better treatment after Azkaban mysteriously disappeared.
Another thought: Newton’s third law is equivalent to conservation of momentum. If you can magically counteract the former you could potentially use this to make a magical reactionless drive! Not what the Aurors are going for.
If it were that easy to create spells of mass destruction simply by tampering with little understood physical principles, I’d think people would have done it before.
Of course, in the wizarding world, I suppose that if people have done it before, there isn’t a strong expectation of evidence that the knowledge would be publicly available.
They’ll just check with somebody who knows what they’re talking about (such as Dumbledore, or whoever he recommends) when they get around to the real work.
I suppose it triggers off your brain to see if you learnt that trick in a Muggle physics or chemistry class. Same way “it” triggers off your brain to see if you have at least a vague idea of what a spell does before making the magical bats appear.
I’m reminded of the Mage: The Ascension tabletop RPG. In that setting, Paradox forces inflicted very painful backlash on mages who performed magic that a watching “muggle” would find hard or impossible to believe in—so a lot of the game revolved around finding a way for your spells to look like plausible accidents. Cast fireballs near something that could have exploded on its own, give heart attacks preferrably to elderly or overweight targets, and so on.
The Hogwarts anti-tech jinx could be the inverted, less vicious version of it. If Harry gets around to seriously tackle it, perhaps he’ll find the solution to be as simple as passing his tricks off as magical artifacts or Charms.
61: So they plan to ward Askaban against “opposite reaction”. What would that even mean? Are they all going to fall down through the floor for lack of an opposite reaction pushing them up?
Hogwarts interferes with electrical devices, but brains still work.
There certainly seems to be a common thread in many magic worlds that “physics doesn’t work, but all the stuff physics causes that most people intuitively EXPECT to happen, still happen”
And it doesn’t simply degrade into bullshit because you think that you can explain why things work as expected for some physical reasons. You may have a certain level of reductionistic insight, you may expect things to stop behaving as usual, but magic is lawful, and so it continues working according to naïve physics, according to expectations of somebody who does not even pretend to understand world in physical terms.
Technology is (bastardized ancient) Greek for trickery. Electricity works, gravity works, macroscopic thermodynamic works. Counterintuitive trickery without Atlantis-issued license doesn’t.
They’ll probably just put in a ward preventing large objects from moving faster than a broomstick. That’s what they’re actually worried about, and it’s probably easier.
That’s what they plan to do, based on what little information they have, but that doesn’t mean such a thing is actually doable.
Heh, I just thought they’d find themselves unable to walk but that’s just horrific. Then I realised that they wouldn’t fall as gravity is just the opposite reaction of their pull on the earth, so it’s okay. Then I realised that the electromagnetic forces of the chemical bonds within their bodies all rely on opposite reaction, and it went back to horrific. Still, despite the tragic deaths that would result hopefully it would be made up for by all the prisoners who presumably would get somewhat better treatment after Azkaban mysteriously disappeared.
Another thought: Newton’s third law is equivalent to conservation of momentum. If you can magically counteract the former you could potentially use this to make a magical reactionless drive! Not what the Aurors are going for.
If it were that easy to create spells of mass destruction simply by tampering with little understood physical principles, I’d think people would have done it before.
Of course, in the wizarding world, I suppose that if people have done it before, there isn’t a strong expectation of evidence that the knowledge would be publicly available.
They’ll just check with somebody who knows what they’re talking about (such as Dumbledore, or whoever he recommends) when they get around to the real work.
I loved the Weasleyisms in this chapter.
I suppose it triggers off your brain to see if you learnt that trick in a Muggle physics or chemistry class. Same way “it” triggers off your brain to see if you have at least a vague idea of what a spell does before making the magical bats appear.
I’m reminded of the Mage: The Ascension tabletop RPG. In that setting, Paradox forces inflicted very painful backlash on mages who performed magic that a watching “muggle” would find hard or impossible to believe in—so a lot of the game revolved around finding a way for your spells to look like plausible accidents. Cast fireballs near something that could have exploded on its own, give heart attacks preferrably to elderly or overweight targets, and so on.
The Hogwarts anti-tech jinx could be the inverted, less vicious version of it. If Harry gets around to seriously tackle it, perhaps he’ll find the solution to be as simple as passing his tricks off as magical artifacts or Charms.
My guess is that the aurors working on it are all as clueless as Arthur and that the project will be a complete wash.
They’re idiots.