In the latest couple chapters, the remembrall’s importance has been revealed I think: He was at broomstick flying class, and yet he had forgotten Newtonian mechanics and thus failed to see they didn’t apply to broomsticks.
I don’t like this interpretation because I don’t think there’s any problem to solve.
My memories tell me that broomsticks in both the books and movies were determinedly Newtonian, and not Aristotelian. Broomsticks do not stop instantly, people smash into the ground when they can’t pull up enough, and so on. Before I accept that Eliezer has not made a mistake or is not deliberately diverging from canon and so there is even a forgetting for the remembrall to be linked to, I want to see some citations where broomsticks act in a clearly Aristotelian manner.
It seems that they might act in a hybrid Aristotelian/Newtonian manner. Certainly in canon they talk about broomsticks having maximum speed not maximum acceleration. And people have trouble pulling from being near to hitting the ground, something which sort of makes sense in an Aristotelian framework because objects want to go to the ground.
Outside canon, the movement of the broomsticks in the movies does seem to be a definite mix but this is likely more due to standard movie physics than anything else.
I remembered the top speed from the whole Firebolt/Nimbus sequence of events, but I don’t regard that as even weak evidence for Aristotelian mechanics.
Wind resistance/drag means that there’s a ‘terminal velocity’ even in free fall; change of acceleration simply changes a broomstick+wizard’s terminal velocity upwards, doesn’t remove it at all.
(Another example: my car operates according to Newtonian mechanics in the real world—but still has a top speed, which is why I’m not setting land-speed records on Nevadan salt flats in my spare time.)
But the terminal velocity should then be a function of the cross-section of the person on the broomstick. Instead the brooms themselves have maximal velocities.
I don’t think Quidditch players vary all that much in cross-section. As well demand that auto manufacturers list their speeds as a function of how clean the car exterior is, how inflated the tires, what weight is being borne, the altitude, etc.
EDIT: OK, after looking at the descriptions on the Harry Potter Wikia, I’ve changed my mind. The Seeker article specifically characterizes seekers as small and lightweight and the fastest players on the team. Which, fortunately for my self-esteem, is consistent with my position that canon uses Newtonian mechanics.
Broomsticks have very tiny cross-section, so cross-section due to the person will be the majority of the air resistance. The difference in size between say Harry Potter and some of the big Slytherin Beaters should matter a lot.
Newtonian brooms are supported by canon then even more, aren’t they?
Most Beaters are large and burly, and all the Seekers (with their premium on top speed) are the opposite. Exactly as expected with Newtonian brooms (or horses).
But if air resistance didn’t matter because brooms move at a fixed velocity/acceleration in an Aristotelian manner, one would expect Seekers to have normally distributed body sizes as Quidditch team captains select for things like piercing eyesight, lightning reflexes, or just simian arms.
(Harry & Draco are both relatively small and thin; Viktor Krum is tall, but also ‘thin’.)
And people have trouble pulling from being near to hitting the ground, something which sort of makes sense in an Aristotelian framework because objects want to go to the ground.
It makes sense by postulating that a broomstick always goes where it’s pointed (no Newtonian momentum), but there is a maximum angular speed for turning the broomstick. The rider applies force to turn the broomstick, which means there’s resistance, so it’s not difficult to assume that the resistance creates an effective maximum angular speed.
This doesn’t sum up to Newton, of course, because this maximum angular speed isn’t dependent on current linear speed.
“More importantly, why did the Remembrall go off like that?” Harry said. “Does it mean I’ve been Obliviated?”
“That puzzles me as well,” Professor McGonagall said slowly. “If it were that simple, I would think that the courts would use Remembralls, and they do not. I shall look into it, Mr. Potter.”
In-universe, this is little evidence for or against anything. But from a narrative point of view, if the answer to “What did the Remembrall flare up about?” had been “Do not use the Time-Turner for showing off”, this was the time to reveal it, rather than show Harry and McGonagall being confused. Certainly it wouldn’t be an answer worth waiting over forty chapters for.
I agree that you could read it like that, but I’d have thought that if it was something immediate like that, we’d have seen Harry realize and acknowledge it to himself. There doesn’t seem much point in leaving it a bit mysterious if that’s all it meant.
There’s an abrupt scene change, after which Harry is sitting in McGonagall’s office. Now, his conversation with McGonagall is evidence for Harry being dim about that question (which is not that unlikely) or it being foreshadowing, possibly for this (which is not that unlikely). (McGonagall would also have to not point out “hey, maybe it was that you forgot my rule”, which makes the first somewhat less likely.)
That doesn’t seem like sufficient payoff, especially since there was no way to anticipate that meaning ahead of time. Also, that’s not really something Harry forgot, more something he didn’t even notice.
Whether it’s “sufficient” is a matter of taste, I’d say. It’s just sufficient enough payoff for me and avoids becoming ludicrously much payoff—the Remembrall is a child’s toy, afterall, not an ancient Artifact with DarkLord-detecting capacity. Indicating you neglected to do something (forgot to lock your door, forgot to apply your knowledge of physics) is more in tune with what I’d expect it to do.
More to the point it correlates heavily where locale is concerned—the first broomstick lesson. So it’s more likely that it indicates something near those events, instead of something in Harry’s remote past.
That just doesn’t feel like how Remembralls work, though. For one, “forgotten something” involves having known it: using Aristotelian instead of Newtonian physics seems like a mistake, not a forgetting. Like, if he had learned through some comically painful experience that broomsticks did indeed follow Newtonian laws, and then put a rocket on his broomstick: I would expect the Remembrall to be glowing this brightly at this point.
For two, a simple magic item that works exactly as intended, no matter how trivial or gigantic the task—that feels like how magic items in the MoR Potterverse ought to behave.
For what it’s worth, I believe Vaniver has the right answer.
Considering the language used to describe the brightness of the remembrall, I’d guess that it’s supposed to imply that he’s forgotten something of great magnitude or importance.
Magic doesn’t appear to think in terms of natural laws (insofar as it can be said to think,) so forgetting to apply Newtonian physics in a particular situation doesn’t sound like something the remembrall should mark as a major lapse of memory.
Magic doesn’t appear to think in terms of natural laws (insofar as it can be said to think,) so forgetting to apply Newtonian physics in a particular situation doesn’t sound like something the remembrall should mark as a major lapse of memory.
Regardless of what magic thinks the laws of physics are, it ought to notice how important they seem to Harry. However, I still doubt that they’re important enough to Harry as all that (although the writing in Ch 60 may suggest otherwise).
In the latest couple chapters, the remembrall’s importance has been revealed I think: He was at broomstick flying class, and yet he had forgotten Newtonian mechanics and thus failed to see they didn’t apply to broomsticks.
I don’t like this interpretation because I don’t think there’s any problem to solve.
My memories tell me that broomsticks in both the books and movies were determinedly Newtonian, and not Aristotelian. Broomsticks do not stop instantly, people smash into the ground when they can’t pull up enough, and so on. Before I accept that Eliezer has not made a mistake or is not deliberately diverging from canon and so there is even a forgetting for the remembrall to be linked to, I want to see some citations where broomsticks act in a clearly Aristotelian manner.
It seems that they might act in a hybrid Aristotelian/Newtonian manner. Certainly in canon they talk about broomsticks having maximum speed not maximum acceleration. And people have trouble pulling from being near to hitting the ground, something which sort of makes sense in an Aristotelian framework because objects want to go to the ground.
Outside canon, the movement of the broomsticks in the movies does seem to be a definite mix but this is likely more due to standard movie physics than anything else.
I remembered the top speed from the whole Firebolt/Nimbus sequence of events, but I don’t regard that as even weak evidence for Aristotelian mechanics.
Wind resistance/drag means that there’s a ‘terminal velocity’ even in free fall; change of acceleration simply changes a broomstick+wizard’s terminal velocity upwards, doesn’t remove it at all.
(Another example: my car operates according to Newtonian mechanics in the real world—but still has a top speed, which is why I’m not setting land-speed records on Nevadan salt flats in my spare time.)
But the terminal velocity should then be a function of the cross-section of the person on the broomstick. Instead the brooms themselves have maximal velocities.
I don’t think Quidditch players vary all that much in cross-section. As well demand that auto manufacturers list their speeds as a function of how clean the car exterior is, how inflated the tires, what weight is being borne, the altitude, etc.
EDIT: OK, after looking at the descriptions on the Harry Potter Wikia, I’ve changed my mind. The Seeker article specifically characterizes seekers as small and lightweight and the fastest players on the team. Which, fortunately for my self-esteem, is consistent with my position that canon uses Newtonian mechanics.
Broomsticks have very tiny cross-section, so cross-section due to the person will be the majority of the air resistance. The difference in size between say Harry Potter and some of the big Slytherin Beaters should matter a lot.
Newtonian brooms are supported by canon then even more, aren’t they?
Most Beaters are large and burly, and all the Seekers (with their premium on top speed) are the opposite. Exactly as expected with Newtonian brooms (or horses).
But if air resistance didn’t matter because brooms move at a fixed velocity/acceleration in an Aristotelian manner, one would expect Seekers to have normally distributed body sizes as Quidditch team captains select for things like piercing eyesight, lightning reflexes, or just simian arms.
(Harry & Draco are both relatively small and thin; Viktor Krum is tall, but also ‘thin’.)
Yes, that supports Newtonian broomsticks quite strongly.
It makes sense by postulating that a broomstick always goes where it’s pointed (no Newtonian momentum), but there is a maximum angular speed for turning the broomstick. The rider applies force to turn the broomstick, which means there’s resistance, so it’s not difficult to assume that the resistance creates an effective maximum angular speed.
This doesn’t sum up to Newton, of course, because this maximum angular speed isn’t dependent on current linear speed.
Um, I thought it was pretty clear that he forgot he wasn’t supposed to use his Time Turner for silly shit like that.
That was also my belief up until this passage:
In-universe, this is little evidence for or against anything. But from a narrative point of view, if the answer to “What did the Remembrall flare up about?” had been “Do not use the Time-Turner for showing off”, this was the time to reveal it, rather than show Harry and McGonagall being confused. Certainly it wouldn’t be an answer worth waiting over forty chapters for.
I agree that you could read it like that, but I’d have thought that if it was something immediate like that, we’d have seen Harry realize and acknowledge it to himself. There doesn’t seem much point in leaving it a bit mysterious if that’s all it meant.
There’s an abrupt scene change, after which Harry is sitting in McGonagall’s office. Now, his conversation with McGonagall is evidence for Harry being dim about that question (which is not that unlikely) or it being foreshadowing, possibly for this (which is not that unlikely). (McGonagall would also have to not point out “hey, maybe it was that you forgot my rule”, which makes the first somewhat less likely.)
That doesn’t seem like sufficient payoff, especially since there was no way to anticipate that meaning ahead of time. Also, that’s not really something Harry forgot, more something he didn’t even notice.
Whether it’s “sufficient” is a matter of taste, I’d say. It’s just sufficient enough payoff for me and avoids becoming ludicrously much payoff—the Remembrall is a child’s toy, afterall, not an ancient Artifact with DarkLord-detecting capacity. Indicating you neglected to do something (forgot to lock your door, forgot to apply your knowledge of physics) is more in tune with what I’d expect it to do.
More to the point it correlates heavily where locale is concerned—the first broomstick lesson. So it’s more likely that it indicates something near those events, instead of something in Harry’s remote past.
That just doesn’t feel like how Remembralls work, though. For one, “forgotten something” involves having known it: using Aristotelian instead of Newtonian physics seems like a mistake, not a forgetting. Like, if he had learned through some comically painful experience that broomsticks did indeed follow Newtonian laws, and then put a rocket on his broomstick: I would expect the Remembrall to be glowing this brightly at this point.
For two, a simple magic item that works exactly as intended, no matter how trivial or gigantic the task—that feels like how magic items in the MoR Potterverse ought to behave.
For what it’s worth, I believe Vaniver has the right answer.
Considering the language used to describe the brightness of the remembrall, I’d guess that it’s supposed to imply that he’s forgotten something of great magnitude or importance.
Magic doesn’t appear to think in terms of natural laws (insofar as it can be said to think,) so forgetting to apply Newtonian physics in a particular situation doesn’t sound like something the remembrall should mark as a major lapse of memory.
Regardless of what magic thinks the laws of physics are, it ought to notice how important they seem to Harry. However, I still doubt that they’re important enough to Harry as all that (although the writing in Ch 60 may suggest otherwise).