Musings on Magic

Journal started May 19, 2006


If there were magic, as I define it at least, things sure would be different around here. If the level of entropy in our universe was balanced, and not always increasing, that would be the end of It right then and there. One interesting thing though, is in cross-breeding. Normally when you breed dogs of various kinds randomly, their genes proceed towards the average rapidly as the variation of breeding smooths out and what comes out looks not unlike some sort of wolf. But if there were magic, that tendancy toward genetic disorder would be matched by a tendancy toward ordering, so for instance your first generation would be purebred, your second generation could be hybrid, and your third generation would be back to purebred. It's linear statistics instead of a bell curve... I think.

Ah entropy, if only entropy stayed constant in this world of ours. Then there would be an up for every down. For every square there is a round. For every high there is a low. For every to there is a fro~\o To and fro, stop and go, that's what maakes the world go round ~\o Unfortunately, there are some downs that never come up again. There are some squares that never come around. There are highs without lows, and there are toos without frohs. And most importantly, as demonstrated by every living being in recorded history, there is a stop from which nothing ever goes again.

I won't live long enough I'm sure to actually realize this through subtle hinting, so I'll just talk about it here a little. Magic is measured in the same units as Entropy. It's a little modification to the Gibbs Free Energy equation. For niceness call magic M. Thus:

G === U + P*V - T(S-M)

The consequence of this is that every system has some amount of entropy (S) and some amount of magic (M). When there is no magic, things happen as we classically expect them to, proceeding towards the state of maximum disorder. When there is magic though, 'stuff' proceeds to a lesser degree. A gas would have a higher energy than it 'ought' to for a given unit energy, pressure and volume. If you look at the more commonly used change in Gibbs' Energy, which determines whether any reaction will proceed, it looks like this:

dG = dH - T*d(S-M)

An example is the combination of hydrogen and oxygen to form water. When you break apart a mol of hydrogen and oxygen you suck up 1371 kilojoules and when they form into water it releases 1852 kilojoules. That means 481 kilojoules comes flying out at you generally with a high pitched squeak and a brief incandescence, and the water left over is more stable. Now supposing someone cast a magic spell (that is, performed an experiment) but managed to get twice as much magic as entropy. Then they would start with water and it would suck 481 kilojoules of heat out of its surrounding environment, probably causing frost to condense on the beaker, and the water would separate into hydrogen and oxygen gasses. I'm not talking electrolysis: the above spell would happen without spending any electricity, or other useful energy. Then you could capture the hydrogen and conceivably use it to power a fuel cell.

That's right. A car fueled by water is magic! c.c

*sighs* It makes so much sense in my head, it just kills me that it can't be true in the real world. Why are things so unbalanced?


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