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Welcome to Physics!



If you have found yourself linked to this thread, it probably means that you have some stuff to learn about the way the universe works. Whether it be an Ex-Nhilo generation power, a battle suit made of antimatter, or a character who moves at the speed of light in atmosphere; or if you just came in to see for yourself, we greet you with open arms 3nodding

Why do we need to know the laws of physics

A: No one I know has all the laws of physics down, not even the physicists. However, it is important for anyone using a fighting style, weapons, or technology, to understand some basics behind the way the world works.

Common Examples
If I throw a punch, what makes my punch different from yours?

Why do little bullets kill people, but pebbles and punches usually don't?

Why is it that when you fall you go splat?

How come people freeze in space?

Why can't I survive a nuclear explosion?

People talk all the time about lightspeed, exactly how fast is it?


Introduction to Physics

It is probably a good idea to begin with the basics of what science is, and how it applies to Gaia, and Free Form RP in general. My old physics professor gave us this definition.



He went on to talk about Technology saying that technology was the physical application of science. In this respect, just about everything is science, as long as it has something to do with the universe. It doesn't matter what universe, or whether it is considered magical, modern, mystic, or even comical, if it exists in the physical universe, it falls under the domain of science.

For example, they call Boxing the Sweet Science.


Advanced Subjects
Pg...........Subject
2.............Space
3.............Time
4.............Gravity
5.............Electricity
6.............Magnetism
7.............Light
8.............Sound
9.............Units of Measure

Time




Basic
Have you ever wondered what time was? When children are younger, they have an extreme difficulty telling time. For one, they cannot count when born, and for another, their perspective of time changes as they grow older.

More on that in a bit, however, let's look at some basics of time, now that you are old enough to count and hopefully, multiply. 3nodding

In ancient Persia,

before Alexander the Great conquered the known world, the Persians had a very complex system of mathematics, based not upon 1-9 + the Hindu "0" (knot), but a system of 60.
60x60 = 3600. (More on this in the Advanced Section). It is from a man named Kidinnu (Cidenas), and his devotion to precision, that a proper Solar and Lunar Calender was set into stone, allowing the accurate prediction of Eclipses - something essential on the battlefield of the ancient world.


So you have your 364-366 day years, 12 months, the months being based on moonths, or the Lunar cycles. This time frame is then broken into 24 hours, and each of the 24 hours, broken into 60 minutes, each minute broken into 60 seconds.

so you have

60 seconds to a minute
3,600 seconds to an hour
86,400 seconds to a day
31,536,000 seconds to a year.

All because of the persians. So how does this Relate to Space?
Well, its quite funny really, we as humans tend to use the same number systems over and over. Our planet is divided into "degrees" just like a compass, when drawing a circle. When you skateboard, or snowboard, and turn all the way around back to where you started, they call it a "360" right?

That's 360 degrees.
A Right angle is set up as 90 degrees, a reverse is 180 degrees, and a diagonal line is 45 degrees.

90 minutes = typical movie, 1 1/2 hours.
180 minutes = 3 hours, a half day at school, or long movie.
45 minutes : 3/4ths of an hour.

when you divide 360 by 30 you get 12. 30 days for a month, 12 months...
It gets wierder as you go. The Pentagon

is based upon the number 72. 72 degrees, doesn't sound like much, but its 360 degrees divided by 5, and 72 degrees divided by 6 equals 12...

so 5 x 6 x 12 = 360 degrees... but 3 x 4 = 12...
so, 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 = 360 degrees.
1 x 2 x 3 x 4 x 5 x 6 = 720 degrees.

your typical Gemetria Jewish Qabalist would be scratching his eyeballs out about now. Obviously, these numbers repeat themselves, and are extremely basic. A Human being has 10 fingers, if you count the opposable thumbs, so 10 times 360 degrees = 3600, number used for seconds in an hour, while
720 degrees (a double circle) divided by 10 = 72 degrees, the number you use for making a pentagon.


Intermediate

Temporal Perception: Quest for Immortality

For many people, constitution is the power not to die, but for the wise, it is the power to live. Ancient alchemies from China to the Mediterranean focused principly around the Quest for Immortality. The substantive quest for the Philosopher?s Stone, was infact, not primarily about transmuting lead into gold, but about transmuting mortality to immortality.
The first notion obviated concerning immortality is the Antediluvian principle of Longevity. Many old men on their death beds bemoan their fates, and search for some means of living ?just a little longer?. ?The ancients?? they say, ?lived for centuries, therefore, why shouldn?t we ??. A more advanced, and thought out version is constituted as Eternal Youth. While rarely consisting of being a small child, there is a basic saying that goes like this. Youth is Wasted on the young.
The youth desire the wisdom and power of the old, and the old desire the beauty and vitality of the young. Still, there is a lack of foresight in even this notion of not only escaping death, but escaping a deathly state as a decrepid old mummy. What after all, is the use of eternal youth, if you can be killed by something at the drop of a hat ? For this reason, the Philosopher?s Stone aspires to even greater heights, addressing, as it were, the 72 deaths of Azrael (from the Testament of Abraham). First of course, is disease, one of the greatest fears of the age. A wise alchemist may say to himself ?Surely I can avoid war and the sword, and certainly the death of great falls and drowning in the river, but how could I go about life, always fleeing from something I cannot even see ??
- 2004 Essay, Noire

Advanced

Temporal Mechanics
Time units function along a reverse axis of space, that is to say, you measure time's importance for an event over itself per event. For example, in space, if you have 10,000 something, that's very powerful, if you have 1/10,000 of something in space, asside from precision and cutting, a smaller number in space, is particularly bad.

Examples:
Range of Weapons
Area effect of explosions
Distance teleported
Size of force field
Square meters of "space" for Fortress

Meanwhile, Time is something that only rarely is useful in large quantities per action. Temporally speaking, the things you want to be large in time include:

Sustained pleasure
life span (usually)
Stamina during excercise
energy/power supply, such as a candle or generator
Artwork
Beauty
machine life (such as your computer)

in other regards, people want their time units to be as short as possible, because that's where the energy per frame becomes useful. For example, if I throw a punch, and it takes 1 second to get to your face, it may seem fast, but two miles per hour is not...fast...
meanwhile, if a person kicks you in 1/50th of a second, it means their kick is probably travelling about 100 mph. In thsi case, you have a "push/pull" relationship.

THe final value has to equal 1.

50 meters / 1 second (a space measurement) * 1 / 50th second) = 1. So how does this translate into energy?
Well, look at the numbers with a "1/ x" added.

[50meters/1] multiplied by [1/0.02seconds] = 2500, if you allow meters and seconds to be the same value.

Time is a measure of velocity and speed, the master of Time is the master of battle, in more ways than you could possibly imagine.

Time is also relative, just like space/distance. For example, when you look up into the sky, and see a big airplane, to you, it appears to be moving very slow, even at 400+ mph. Why? Perception.
Perception states that when you are travelling very fast, other things tend to seem slower unless heading in an opposite direction. At a 90 degree angle (of 360) an object is considered zero (straight ahead) velocity,
+/-90 more degrees, so the X/Y axis has changed, and the object is moving at its full velocity.
At +/-90 more degrees, for a full 180 degree shift (up becomes down) the contrast is stacked. They are moving at their full speed plus your full speed, and the damage and data are "squared".

This is similar to why if you smash two Uranium blocks together you get a nuclear explosion.

Of course, perception geometry is a bit more muddled than the over simplified statements above, and only applies if time were "frozen" like a snapshot.

For example, in escape velocity



you have to compesate for for speeds, not one. The speed you are travelling and the speed of gravity. This is then multipled by a large radial number than figures out when your angle isn't jerked around like a spiral graph.



the odd thing about a straight velocity vs. a curved velocity is the fact that orbit is considered acceleration. If you take a bucket of water and spin it around you'll notice you can create an antigravity well at the bottom which for some reason holds the water in the bucket.
So orbit really can't be a straight verticle action or the objecti n question will be sucked back like two magnets. Instead the object must be travelling at an angle. It is sort of a "cheat code" for turning a constant velocity into a permanent state of acceleration.

Imagine you are walking up a see-saw.



as you walk to the end of the see saw, it begins to tip back down. What makes it tip? Gravity. You move forward, on what appears to be a straight line to you (velocity) but gravity changes the space of the line. In another example, try walking up the wrong end of the escalators.



This is how a planet maintains orbit. Its velocity is converted into acceleration which compensates for the gravity of the Sun. (more on gravity below).

All of this is a measure of timing. If the timing for the difference between how far you fell, vs. how far you rose, was off, your travel through space, and your velocity through time would change.

Going Really Fast
Have you ever been on a long car ride at 100kph/60+ mph ? You may notice, after a while, your mind and perception acclimates to the new speed, sharp turns and all. The same effect exists in jet fighter pilots but to a much more exaggerated degree. That's why the military sanctions (forces) the FCC to allow high reaction "twitchy" video games. They also permit the blood/gore ones for desensitization of the youth (so they don't freak on the combat field) but "twitch" is FAR more important to the Military.

In some roleplaying games they have something called "combat sense" which dilates time. You may be familiar with it in Max Payne, or in Prince of Persia. (or their respective sequals). This concept of temporal distortion was taken to the extreme in the Matrix.



Which was almost completely accurate on what "temporal relativity" would do to a person. Suppose for a minute that two objects are travelling at 300,000 meters per second, (600,000 mph) do they know how fast they are going? Not as long as they are looking at each other. When you look off into the horizon, you gain large amount of visual information, and your senses adapt.

Temporal relativity is somewhat similar. It speaks of time frames. If your time frame is x10, it doesn't mean you see yourself moving 10 times fast, to yourself, you are moving at normal speed, but everyone else is moving ever so slowly. (an effect repeated in Constantine with Keannu Reeves).

if you are literally in a x10 frame of time, that means, relatively speaking, everyone else is in a x0.1 frame. This is where the sickness takes over, and unless absolutely everything is taken into account, the full realization of how screwed up everything is, will fail.

First of all, there is no "drop off" point in visualization. Everything works in octaves, so unless your transition is exact, colors are going to change, because your perception of frequencies (which determine color) will also change. At x10 you will be percieving Ultra violet colors, while visible light will drop into the Inra red spectrum. That's the most important thing to remember. Frequencies of other bodies will decrease by a factor of 10, which means a human body will be more like weak gamma plasma.

In cold hard density ratios, this is not a bad thing for you, because to them, you have transitioned up a density factor approaching something heavy as lead.

the law of 1/2mv^2 = damage still holds true, however, your time frame causes an unwarranted advantage in your favor.

Here's the break down

to them:
you are moving 10x faster
you are 10x harder to hit
you strike at 10x speed, which means your kinetic impact is x100
you have 10x normal attacks per round with no change in effort
you do not appear to be subject to standard laws of momentum

and on your end:
when they shoot you, their bullets are moving at 1/10th speed, such as 60-90 mph, and the bullets themselves have transitioned from lead into water in density. To you, it is like being shot at by a paint ball gun with lame air pressure.

when they attack you physically, they appear to be going so slow you can simply walk around their actions, or catch them. Their "solid water" density becomes the density of a gas on a quantum level, like a plasma field of low power.

A single swing from a "knife hand" will cause their bodies to explode into vapor, like a Hellsing Scene with Alucard.

Their laser and energy weapons transition into "gaseous clouds" high velocity vapor that is so low in mass it has less effect than sunlight. Temperatures lose 2 zeros, and exposure time is fleeting. Thus 50,000 degrees becomes 500 degrees. 20,000 degrees (minimal temperature for plasma) becomes 200 degrees (easy bake oven).

Their kinetic impacts are reduced by 1/100th in intensity, as stated before. Thus if a car were to hit you at 60 mph you might push or kick it out of the way. A wrecking ball would splash off your body like a water balloon.

The voices of everyone would seem weaker, and deeper in octave, your voice would seem several octaves higher, and a high pitched whistle or scream would cause windows in the area to explode and bodies in the immediate vicinity to pass out, go deaf, and possibly rupture and die. The maximum decibel range for humans is 128 in a scream, and you would be adding +20 (14 cool . The force of your breathing or a forced breath would be similar to a Type 5 to 6 tornado or Airplane engine and send people flying back possibly crushing their bodies.

Gravity oddly, would effect you 1/10th as much, directly. That means you could never reach terminal velocity. Terminal Velocity is about 135 m/s, which would be 27 mph to you, and the concrete would seem like water. You could jump 10 times higher, run 10 times faster, and change direction in a heart beat, in seemingly impossible angles. You would effectively, be Neo or Morpheus from the Matrix.

The Downsides
If you were mortal before, and still are, for some reason, then you can look to a very short life span. An adult usually has 20-60 more years left of life, that would be 2-6 for you, probably less. You could not normally eat anything, or hold anything, without it exploding. The Sky and the rest of the world would seem nightmarish. you would have 120 hours of day light and 120 hours of night. Most normal entities in this situation would starve to death about half way through a pit of insanity. Kind of like Heroine.

Chronokinesis... the Next Speed.

Electricity


Basic


blah blah blah





Intermediate



Advanced

Light


Basic

laser beams, sunlight





Intermediate
electromagnetism, radiation


Advanced
EM frequencies, candellas, Rads

Units of Measure

English Vs. Metrics
Most of the owrld today uses the metric system. Certain places, including the US and Britain, do not. They use the english system. The system I speak of is for measuring.

Gallons, like a gallon of milk, or gasoline. A gallon is about 8 pounds. So a 160 lb person cannot possibly spill more than 20 gallons of blood, even if ground into a pasty red gew.

Ounces 64 ounces makes a half gallon. 12 ounces makes a can of soda. 128 ounces makes a gallon, and 16 ounces makes a pound. There are also special measures of ounces, like Troy, but those are rarely important.

Pounds, a measure of how much you are effected by gravity. for instance, in outerspace, you weigh zero. When attempting to crush someone into paste, you would usually want to measure things in pounds, such as 2000 pounds of pressure. A Typical male adult weighs between 145 and 245 lbs, and 300+ is they are fat or very tall. A typical female adult weighs between 100 and 200 lbs, and is usually shorter than a male, hence less weight.
Note that muscle is more heavy than fat, so real exercise may cause you to gain weight, not lose it. eek

Tonnes often spelled tons. This represents 2000 lbs, or about the same as a mid sized car made of metal, and not plastic. Most cars made after 1980 are made of plastic and therefore are not 2000 pounds (1 ton) unless they are also very big.
1 ton is also the same as 10 men, or about 12-15 women or teenangers, or 20-30 children. Pro wrestlers are very fat or large, therefore 6-8 of them could represent 1 ton.
Elevators typcially snap at between 1 and 5 tons. A fully loaded 18 wheeler hauling heavy stone or metal may weigh up to 40 tons. A Family Home with several rooms may, counting the foundation, weigh as much as 100 tons.

Feet/foot a unit representing 12 inches, 30 cetimeters, or roughly the length of a large college math book. A typical male Adult is between 5 feet and 7 feet tall, or to say, around 2 meters in height. If an adult male is below 5 feet tall or above 7 feet tall, it is considered extraordinary.

Foot-pounds 1 fp = 1.356 joules, or 0.1383 kg/meters

feet/second this is a unit common to FIREARMS, for shooting people. If your bullets are fast, the number will be high. If the number is high, it will cause more damage, and thus kill people faster.
It is also harder to dodge a bullet if it is going VERY fast.

There are 5280 feet in a mile. a mile is about 1.62 kilometers. 1 mile per hour (mph) is about 2 meters per second. Its a lot of math, but a determined person can find out very quickly what's up.

Mile 12 city blocks in distance. 5280 feet. Note that 3 feet equals 1 yard, and a yard is only slightly smaller than 1 meter. So about 1600 meters equals a mile.

mph miles per hour. There are 3600 seconds in an hour. Your heart beats between 60 and 80 beats per minute, so if you have no clue, you can use your heart for a second counter. If your heart rate is fast, divide by 1.5 (90/minute) or 2 (120/minute).
If your heart beats too fast it will explode. The Earth is about 25,000 miles around. (24,901.55) Therefore, if you can move at 25,000 miles an hour, you can orbit the earth in 60 minutes.
In order to go around the world at the speed of your heart beat, you would have to go about 3600 times faster, which is 90 million miles per hour. The problem, is something called "escape velocity" mentioned in "Gravity" above.

Really Small Numbers

Small numbers are used for a variety of things, and just because they are small, it doesn't mean they can't be useful in combat. Things you want to be small in combat include:

• Time: including time spend for attacking, defending, dodging, or movement. For example, it if takes you a fraction of a second to make an attack, that probably means
  1-- your attack was a very high speed.
  2-- you can probably make several attacks in 1 full second
  3-- your initiative and response times are probably very fast
  
  
• Surface Area: When dealing with things such as piercing, and slashing weapons, such as armor piercing bullets, needles, fencing weapons, knives, and so on, you want the surface of a blade to be as small as possible. Since the smallest number is zero, the "vannishing point" of any good weapon should be as close to zero as possible.
  This is another example of "zero" producing infinity. If the width of an edge is zero, then we say it is "infinitely sharp". wink
  
  The two characters you see above, are from an Anime called "Kiddy Grade" and their spaceship uses a 1 dimensional (0 width) wire to cut whole spaceships in half.
  
  
• Encumbrance: the lighter your clothing, the less encumbrance you have. Encumbrance is stuff that is bulky, slows you down, weighs a lot, or generally gets in the way. If the weight of your equipment is lower, you can move faster, and jump higher. When attempting acrobatic stunts which are common to martial arts and ninja movies, it is sometimes best to have a slippery, sheen surface, thus you might see a gymnist in very tight clothing.
  Note that with a Mecha, the lighter the mecha (i.e. the lower encumbrance) the faster it can move, and the cheaper the fuel to power it. This follows the thinking of objects such as cellphones, mp3 players, and computer chips, small is good.
  

deci- the abreviation for 1/10th. In scientific notation, such as a computer calculator, this is written with a negative next to the exponent (e) as this 1e-1. Examples: Decimal.

centi- a more common unit in metrics, used for measuring height. 1 centimeter is 1/100th of 1 meter, and 1 meter is about the same as 1 yard and a few inches. 1e-2 abreviation "c"

milli- even more commonly used that centi- milli- is used for millimeters, milliliters, milligrams, and so on. You would use this for measuring chemical poisons, drugs, or art designs on a photograph or painting. 1e-3, or 1/1000th. Abreviation "m" An example of something measured in mm (millimeters) would be bullet diameters.

micro- the symbol s usually a goofy looking cursive "m" or "u" like "mu". A micrometer is a unit commonly used in metal shops for things such as barrel diameters of guns. 1e-6, or 1 millionth.

nano- a very popular term in the sci fi and roleplaying community, this abreviation 1e-9 means 1 billionth. Nanometers are useful for measuring things larger than molecules such as bacterium, blood cells, and so on. Nanotechnology gets its name from this, hence "nanites" like "termites". Nano (units) are not visible to the naked eye, without very unusual eyes.

angstrom a very odd, but useful value meaning 1/10 billion. 1e-10. This value was common for measuring molecules, and is common only to spatial measures. It is the partner to "myriad" in obscurity and 10k.
Cybertechnology, such as neurofibers, can be measured accurately with angstroms.

pico- 1e-12, or one trillionth. A thousand times smaller than nanotech, pico units are good for measuring distances within an atom, such as the nucleus. Picoseconds are a common unit of time used for firing LASERS OF DOOM, to conserve power. The frequency of Infra-red light becomes a tangible number with picoseconds.

femto- 1e-15, or 1/1,000,000,000,000,000; femtoseconds and femtometers are units which can be used to measure still frames of visible light waves. The color spectrum can be broken fairly efficiently using femptometers, and the diameter of electrical fields such as used in quantum physics become workable at the "quadrillionth" scale. A person moving in this time frame, would seem to light speed, to be moving at lightspeed, and lightspeed to itself, would be relatively zero. A Sprint for a normal human in this time frame would be 1 light year per second.

atto- 1e-18, 1 quintillionth. Useful for measuring things like gravity distortion for a large body or from a very long distance. attojoules, attometers, this number has barely entered the domain of early 21st century science. Breaking down X-rays becomes possible at this point.
If a human being were using this time frame, they would be able to move across the galaxy in seconds. Most of the information required to work with quantum field theory would be available with this level of sensitivity.

zepto- 1e-21, the matter-energy threshold has been exceeded at this point, and the true quantum wave state of all things become possible. A Person moving in this time frame would not only be able to span the visible universe in a few hours, but would also create such a horrible shockwave that entire star systems or even galaxies might implode in thier wake. 1 sextillionth

yocto- 1e-24 these units are so small that they might as well be zero. You could span the entire universe in seconds. The motion of your form, whatever it may be, would turn the universe inside out with as little mass as a human adult. in one second, you could arrange every stone on the surface of the earth. A blackhole would seem like a ball of light you could hold in your hand. 1 octillionth.

I looked up "universe" on dictionary.com, though the thought could seem laughable to some, but it brings out fresh ideas.

All matter and energy, including the earth, the galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space, regarded as a whole.
The earth together with all its inhabitants and created things.
The human race.
The sphere or realm in which something exists or takes place.

So, in the first case, the universe could be seen as all, just in plain terms what holds everything that exists. Which as scientists look into black holes and speak of traveling to other universes (which two infinites are an impossiblity) than they must come up which another term. Could be that the universe contains all existances of time.... in which it would seem to be true, if the term refers to itself as the withholder of all things.

I shall share more of my thoughts on the subject later.

~devil

EDIT: sorry that this is not physics at it's core, but the mention of the universe urged me to make my comments and opinions viewable to all.