Bending the Elements

When discussing Aristotle’s elaboration of the four elements as the foundation of matter in my first day of an introductory chemistry class, I used to spend five seconds poking fun at the 2010 movie The Last Airbender. I only watched it once (for free on DVD) and I thought it was very poor. I had high expectations. An interesting theme that incorporated Earth, Water, Air, Fire, into daily life. A famous director. What could go wrong? It was a disappointing mess. Elemental was not great, but much better. And I had recently proposed teaching a non-majors class titled Earth, Water, Air, Fire, Life!

 

Then several years ago, a student suggested that I watch the Nickelodeon animated TV series that the movie was based on: Avatar, the Last Airbender. A second student piped up to support the first one and both thought the TV series was very well done. I’m very glad that two brave students on the first day of class were willing to challenge me on my poking fun at The Last Airbender. I should say they didn’t think the movie was all that good either, so we were in agreement there, but they encouraged me to give the TV series a chance given my interests in ancient ideas about elements. I nodded politely in response. But in my mind, I was skeptical. I associated the name Nickelodeon with children’s cartoons. (I didn’t watch these growing up in a different country.) Could anything good come out of there particularly when I associated it with Sponge Bob Square Pants (which admittedly I haven’t watched either).

 

Some years passed. I forgot about it. But then this summer something prompted me to watch the TV series. Maybe it was a conversation with my summer research students or maybe prompted by something I read, I don’t remember why. Anyway, I look at my local library catalog and they had the DVDs of almost the entire series (missing one disc in Season 3). So, I settled down to watch Season 1. Episodes are just 20 minutes long, and they were good! The main protagonists were interesting characters and I found the story engaging. I also cheered whenever Appa, the flying bison, got something interesting to do. Appa reminds me of the enigmatic Cat-Bus in My Neighbor Totoro.

 

I’m most of the way through Season 1. My quick synopsis: there are four nations and each of them has practitioners in the art of manipulating their associated element. The Fire nation has attacked the other three and has been dominant. Remnants of the Earth and Water nations have fled or are in hiding, protecting themselves from the conquering Fire nation. The Air nation seems to have mostly disappeared. The main protagonist, Aang, is the reincarnated Avatar who supposedly can be a master of all four elements and end the war. But he’s only twelve years old, and having learned air-bending skills when he was young, still needs to master the other elements. Hence: Avatar, The Last Airbender.

 

The most visual aspect is how to manipulate the element of your specialty to do your will. Earth-benders manipulate the stuff of earth from the ground itself. Water-benders can move water to do their will. Fire-benders seem to mostly create fire and launch them as fireballs (great for war). Air-benders can move air and utilize its currents in their own movement. Three things seem to be needed to manipulate an element: innate propensity, the movement of your arm, and mental focus. Not everyone in a nation has the ability to bend matter. Those that do undergo training to learn the mental focus and the arm movements. Manipulating matter mainly consists of being able to collect it, shape it, and throw it, often against the force of gravity. It’s similar to magic.

 

Of the four elements, air is the lightest and should be the easiest to manipulate against gravity. From a molecular perspective, you need to apply higher pressures in one vicinity to channel the molecules into a lower pressure area. It’s not obvious how one would do that, but a skilled air-bender can generate powerful winds and cyclones suggesting that quite a bit of energy may be involved. Since N₂ makes up almost 80% of our atmosphere, perhaps an air-bender has a special connection to these molecules in their gaseous form and can magically command or will them to move in a particular way. Essentially the air-bender needs to overcome the entropy and cause these molecules to take a low probability macroscopic arrangement.

 

For water, only one substance is involved: molecular H₂O. Perhaps water-bending is similar to air-bending in this regard. The water-bender has an affinity to manipulate the movements of this molecule and overcome gravity. I’ve seen water benders create waves, push water, pull water, and turn it into ice. So the water-bender needs to also have the magical ability to control the hydrogen-bonding between water molecules. Essentially the water-bender uses arm movements that cause bulk water to mimic that same movement. Maybe there’s a hidden force that can be turned on and off by focusing the mind that provides an unseen action-at-a-distance relationship between the arms/hands and the substance H₂O.

 

Earth is a little trickier since there are a whole bunch of substances that make up the earth. Sand is mostly silica but rocks can be made up of all sorts of elements. The primary distinction between Earth and its Water and Air counterparts is its solidity. Air-benders manipulate the gaseous state. Water-benders manipulate the liquid state. Earth-benders manipulate the solid state. But there seem to be limits. Earth-benders don’t manipulate all solid substances. They seem to certainly move ‘natural’ non-man-made stuff, but there is some inconsistency on whether they can manipulate man-made solids: concrete, metal alloys, and the like. So are they limited to some elements but not others? I don’t know. Could water-benders manipulate pure ethanol or mercury which are also liquids? Or are they restricted to H₂O? An air-bender who manipulates O₂ could be a killer. Can Aang move different gaseous substances in different ways? I don’t know.

 

The fire-benders seem to mostly use their art to create fire and launch it as a projectile. Chemically to make ‘fire’ you just need a combustible material and energy to get the chemical reaction started. There are small amounts of methane and other combustible gases in the atmosphere. Do fire-benders essentially manipulate the reaction of methane with oxygen? That might be a sort of air-bending? There’s no sign that they start using a solid combustible. And water seems to put out their fire. Or maybe they use friction as an energy source? Again, I don’t know.

 

The chemist in me seems to be trying to peg element-bending abilities with the chemical substances most involved. But maybe there’s a better way to think about it that I haven’t stumbled upon. Regardless I’m still enjoying the TV series and I’m glad my students encouraged me to give it a chance!

Magi: Artist-Engineers

It was a fateful when Harry Potter shared a train cabin with Ron Weasley on the way to Hogwarts for the first time. Harry generously shares his food-treats with Ron, and Ron acclimates Harry to the Wizarding World that eleven-year olds care about. Ron collects cards of famous wizards, found in treats called Chocolate Frogs. It’s an opportunity for Harry to know a little more about Dumbledore, Hogwarts Headmaster. Ron however, wanting to complete his set, is missing Agrippa. Who is this shadowy Agrippa?

 

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535) is famous for writing On Occult Philosophy. What does he have to do with magic? He’s a Magus, the singular for Magi. Today we might associate ‘magi’ and ‘occult’ with some cult-group that believes in demons and casting magic spells. But in ancient times, magi were wise and learned men. The most famous instance of magi comes in the Bible where ‘wise men from the east’ following a ‘bright star’ journey to see the baby Jesus while bringing gifts fit for a king. The Babylonian magi were also astronomers, studying the heavenly bodies of the night sky. What signs might the stars portend? In those times, there wasn’t a clear distinction between astronomy and astrology. Today, one is a legitimate science, the other is ‘occult’ pseudoscience that retains surprising popularity.

 

In a book focused on the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the historian Anthony Grafton details the writings and doings of characters who melded magic, religion and science – when these were still nascent categories with plenty of overlap. The book is appropriately titled Magus, and Agrippa gets a whole large chapter to himself. In his time, Agrippa was a polymath – someone knowledgeable across many areas of learning. He was a mercenary and fought in wars but more well-known as a theologian, physician, lawyer, scholar, and a writer of the occult. His occult tastes were influenced by Johannes Trimethius, who also gets a hefty chapter to himself in Magus. Both these magi drew on the Kaballah and the neo-Platonist writers in their work.

 

My interest in the history of magical thought was initiated by reading the Harry Potter books as a scientist. Could magic and spell-casting work physically, and how so? (I speculate that it makes use of photons.) As a chemist, I pondered why a wizard would need to rely on potions. Is spell-casting not enough? (I speculate that intricate biochemistry is difficult to control with conventional spell-casting.) That led me to reading books about alchemy and how it influenced the birth of chemistry as a science. (I recommend anything by Lawrence Principe.) But I didn’t know much about magi who did not focus on alchemy.

 

Agrippa was much more interested in the relationship of magic to art and engineering rather than chemistry. Like Trimethius and others before him, the power of magic could be divided into two broad categories. On one hand, there was a ‘black’ magic (to be shunned) that involved the summoning of demons to do one’s bidding. (The Bartimaeus trilogy by Jonathan Stroud uses this as a basis for magic.) On the other hand, there was ‘natural’ magic: the magus, in harmony with nature, learned its secrets and how to harness its power. Scientists and engineers were the true magicians! And since a feature of magic is to amaze its audience, the magus also needed to be a true artist.

 

In the days before TV or radio, so if you wanted entertainment, it had to be live! The magi knew how to put on a good show. Smoke, fire, elaborate costumes, mechanical beasts – this is what brought wows and gasps to the audience. The magus was an artist-engineer and a favorite of kings and rich patrons were automata, “medieval robots” who seemed alive so to speak. Grafton writes: “Agrippa’s emphasis on automata was not accidental. Nothing bothered orthodox readers more than the description of the statues the Egyptians had directed daemons into in order to make their idols speak.” In contrast, the magus was “a master mechanic and a creator of dazzling effects” by knowledge of the natural world and therefore able to design seemingly life-like creations – flying birds, fire-breathing creatures, and talking heads.

 

Making magical devices or artifacts was the distinction of the true magus. This required a true understanding of the underlying rules of the natural world. Our machines and labor-saving devices would awe a medieval time-traveler. A more advanced science does seem indistinguishable from an occult magic. Our harnessing of wired electricity and unwired electromagnetic waves would seem miraculous to Agrippa, but he wouldn’t ascribe it to demons. He’d want to learn from today’s scientists how they accomplished such feats through the study of nature. Agrippa, the magus, would be both surprised and delighted by the advances we have made. He’d also be happy that the demonologists have for the most part been relegated to a fringe group. But he would be concerned that in the present century, science is losing its prestige as a trusted source.

 

Agrippa was an interesting character in an interesting time for science, philosophy, religion and magic. I’d like to think that his writings elevated the craftsman, who in medieval times was more of a second-class citizen. While Grafton’s book is rather academic and at times I found myself skimming over details I was less interested in, I’m happy to learn more about Agrippa and company. Now his name isn’t just a factoid for Harry Potter Trivia Night; and I actually know much more about his life and times as a magus.

Magic of Babel

The biblical tower of Babel fell into ruin because of confusion among people who spoke different languages. Presumably it was a severe breakdown in communication, although the Bible doesn’t provide details. Building on this idea, the author R. F. Kuang has written a novel, aptly named Babel, with a magic system that exploits the differences of meaning between different languages. What is lost in translation becomes a source of power. It’s a difference that makes the difference!

 

While Babel has been compared to Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, other than the setting of the early nineteenth century and the common theme of magic, the two novels are very different. Babel is another iteration of the coming-of-age story whereby a young protagonist is initiated into the study of magic while making new friends – we’ve seen this before many times, it’s a very effective trope. While this is interesting in the first half of the book, the second half focuses on race, colonialism, power, economics, and the lengths people will go through to maintain the hegemony of the status quo. As someone from a Commonwealth country, I’m familiar with the historical setting of Pax Britannica, and I also had the experience as a multilingual international student of being in a foreign place with no other countrymen (at my college). That being said, I feel that Babel was overall depressing, and I think the sociological arc of the story is weaker – it feels like the author is trying too hard to push a particular point of view.

 

The tower of Babel is the centerpiece of Oxford because that’s where the magic happens. The ascendance and economic might of the British Empire and its East India Company maintain hegemony because they fashion magical technologies by etching words in different languages on silver. When someone fluent in those languages speaks the words, it imbues the silver object with magic that enhances a particular technology. For example, it can make cannons fire more truly, carriages travel faster or carry heavy loads, and caravels to more ably weather storms at sea. Metal-etching and language as the foundation of magic isn’t novel – the recent Foundryside series employs a related system – but the system in Babel is more interesting. Kuang’s background in multiple languages enhances her novel, and in my opinion, these are the strongest and most interesting parts.

 

When our main protagonist Robin and his fellow first-year students get their first tour of Babel, a professor says: “Now that you’re part of the tower… the tower knows you.” They’ve just given their blood so that they will be allowed safe entry and exit into the hallowed halls of Babel. Gotta keep the riffraff out. (Foundryside has a similar situation.) Then the professor intones: “You’re in the place where magic is made. It’s got all the trappings of a modern university, but at its heart, Babel isn’t so different from the alchemists’ lairs of old. But unlike the alchemists, we’ve actually figured out the key to the transformation of a thing. It’s not in the material substance. It’s in the name.”

 

I like that Kuang makes the connection to alchemy and the transformation of substances (transmutation), but then emphasizes that it’s not so much its ‘elementary’ material as its name that makes the difference. The power of names and naming is spread across myriad ancient cultures, and still holds significance today. It’s unfortunate that our hypermodern world has too a large extent lost this significance. I also think the idea that information underlies matter, rather than the other way around, is particularly intriguing – and there might be evidence deep in fundamental physics – but that’s a story for another time.

 

In the introductory class to Translation Theory, the professor says: “The first lesson any good translator internalizes is that there exists no one-to-one correlation between words or even concepts from one language to another… Language does not exist as a nomenclature for a set of universal concepts… How do we render the French esprit into English?” This then leads to the “three principles of translation”: A student recites these: “First, that the translation conveys a complete and accurate idea of the original. Second, that the translation mirrors the style and manner of writing of the original. And third, that the translation should read with all the ease of the original composition.”

 

The emphasis of really understanding more than one language deeply and fluidly moving between one language and another is magical, even in our non-magical world. I have first-hand experience trying to learn a new language that I did not grow up speaking. It’s hard work! I haven’t achieved depth or fluency, but I know it’s possible. And the Babel students work insanely hard at translation and getting to the tangled evolutionary roots of words in different languages. The professor also hints at a primordial ‘Adamic’ language that may have been lost while making hints to biblical Babel. A similar concept in Foundryside takes centre stage, while it’s merely a curiosity in Babel.

 

An example of how the magic works by exploiting the differences of word meanings in languages is provided by the professor: “The Greek word idiotes can mean a fool, as our idiot implies. But it also carries the definition of one who is private, unengaged with worldly affairs – his idiocy is derived not from lack of natural faculties, but from ignorance and lack of education. When we translate idiotes to idiot, it has the effect of removing knowledge. This [silver] bar, then, can make you forget, quite abruptly things you thought you’d learned. Very nice when you’re trying to get enemy spies to forget what they’ve seen.”

 

But there are problems. Silver tarnishes over time and must continue to be ‘maintained’ by cleaning the dross and re-inscribing. The professor explains that depending on the desired effect, you might need larger quantities of silver or higher purity. Most of the bars are alloys, and the continual need for repair and maintenance keeps the scholars of Babel rolling in riches. They have a monopoly. The other interesting aspect comes up in a conversation among students. As languages evolve and start to share more similarities, the erasure of differences causes the silver bars to lose power. This anchors an aspect of the story where Babel is interested in Oriental languages and the Far East. The larger differences in translation result in more ‘raw’ magical power to be exploited. This gives the book an international cast and emphasizes a variety of languages. The interplay between language and magic in Babel is deeper and more interesting than in Foundryside, and in my opinion, it’s the most magical part of the novel.

Tricking Nature

Last weekend, I finished reading Foundryside, the first book in the Founders Trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett. I had read a review that the “magic” system was interesting, the premise being that one tried to trick nature into behaving differently. I don’t think the word ‘magic’ is used; objects that have been tricked to defy nature’s law are referred to as scrived – which essentially means ‘written’. The premise is that the symbols of a ‘language of creation’ were discovered in ancient ruins, and when commands in that language are scrived or inscribed on an object, you could alter its behavior to transcend the natural laws of physics and chemistry. (I guess Latin is not ancient enough for the Foundryside world even though it seems to be okay for Harry Potter and friends.)

 

Metals play a key role. The inscriptions seem mostly to be done on metal which then must be crafted or fused into or as part of the object. It’s like writing computer code and then executing the program, except that it’s on metal-hardware rather than software. But the tricky part is that you have to be very precise in your code so that the object does exactly what you want it to do, not more, not less. If you’re not careful about specifying the rules precisely, unforeseen accidents will happen.

 

I was hoping for more details about exactly what this involves, but I found the level of description a little underwhelming. I think there are some clever parts, and I would personally find it intriguing to delve further into the nitty-gritty, but the writer wisely keeps the story moving. The novel is more steampunk than fantasy or sci-fi, but in any of these genres, it’s the interaction of the people in the story that drive the plot. The magic or gadgets or, in this case scrivings, are secondary to having an interesting narrative that keeps the reader engaged. Personalities and life choices in difficult situations are the meat of the story, and rightly so.

 

That being said, I will indulge my delving a little. The story implies that scriving is easier if you’re only trying to perturb the behavior in a small way. For example, if I wanted iron to behave more like copper, I could inscribe instructions for iron to behave more like copper. They’re both metals, and have many similarities, but there are some differences in physical properties. Copper is a softer metal than iron and easier to shape. Copper is also a better conductor of electricity. Since I’m trained in chemistry, my inscribed program would command the iron to behave as if it had three more d-electrons, so it would have the chemistry of copper, but I would also have to ask it to pretend it has three virtual protons to keep the element neutral overall. Would I need to add neutrons too? Maybe not. If those virtual protons only exerted their electrostatic charge effects on the electrons and not any other non-virtual protons in iron.

 

But how does nature get tricked? In the world of Foundryside, the interesting element is that everything has a personality – it’s an animistic worldview. Thus if you were to enter into dialogue with a piece of iron, the iron atoms would first just repeat a mantra such as “we are attracted to our mobile sea of electrons” (where I’ve used a simple description of metallic bonding). Let’s call that its primary directive. To trick the iron into doing something else, you have to suggest a loophole to sidestep that primary directive. You could then enter the dialogue by asking it to consider having electrons that repelled each other a little more, but still allow them to remain as a mobile sea. This would allow the iron atoms to move further away from each other but still stay connected through the mobile electron cloud. You could thus increase the volume of iron without changing its mass, making it less dense until eventually you get it to float on water. Nature though is much more complicated. Change one thing and you almost always change another thing. Resizing matter, for example, is trickier than it looks.

 

In Foundryside, the behavioral perturbations mostly have to do with kinematics and defying gravity, i.e., things associated more with physics than chemistry. Expert scrivers, the equivalent of magicians, find that scriving is much easier with inanimate objects and that living things are much harder to deal with. I expect that’s where chemistry sneaks a little into the picture. Metals are pure substances made up only one element. (Alloys have more than one element.) Sand, simply put, is just silicon dioxide. But the living leaf of a tree has many different kinds of molecules that interact with each other in complicated ways – essentially biochemistry!

 

I therefore claim that to be a master scrivener you must learn organic chemistry and be able to imagine things happening at the molecular level. I’d say the same for wizards and witches who want to manipulate matter in the most exquisite ways. Foundryside takes a different tact by introducing a God-language, more ancient than the initial creative-language found. It would be cool if that God-language is chemistry, and if the super-ancient  more powerful symbols are representations of chemistry! I suspect not. In any case, I’m still debating whether to read the second book in the trilogy. Foundryside had an engaging narrative and interesting characters but it didn’t wow me. But it might be intriguing enough for me to see where the story leads and discover more about how mind can be infused into matter, an interesting philosophical question at the very least.

Plotting a Taboo

I finally finished my re-read of the Harry Potter series. It took a month to work my way through all seven books but it was enjoyable, and the last two books are simply excellent! Today’s post will focus on one small aspect of the final book: the Taboo.

 

As Voldemort and his minions take over the Ministry of Magic, to hunt down their opponents, they enchant the name ‘Voldemort’ with a Taboo. If someone were to say the name out loud, their location will be betrayed, and the bad guys will apparate (teleport) to the location to capture or eliminate the good guys who have formed the resistance. It’s a clever strategy because no one would say Voldemort’s name by mistake. His followers call him ‘the Dark Lord’. Everyone else calls him ‘You-Know-Who’, and only those who oppose him dare call him Voldemort.

 

Instead of Hermione who usually has the role of explaining things, it’s Ron that breaks the news to Harry: “… the name’s been jinxed… that’s how they track people! Using his name breaks protective enchantments, it causes some kind of magical disturbance – it’s how they found us in Tottenham Court Road… anyone who says it is trackable – quick-and-easy way to find Order [of the Phoenix] members.”

 

Back in the third book, we encountered a GPS-like tracker, the Marauder’s Map. In that case, it’s as if everyone carried a tracker with them and as long as they were in known locations of Hogwarts, they would be observable on the Map. The Room of Requirement, presumably unplottable, does not show up and anyone in it cannot be tracked. It takes a while for Harry to puzzle this out in the sixth book in his vain search for Malfoy. In the seventh book, Hermione and Ron disappear from the Map because they have gone down into the Chamber of Secrets to destroy a Horcrux. So maybe the tracker analogy isn’t as accurate. The Map is more akin to a Security Room that has cameras showing all known locations and can tag (using some sort of facial recognition?) everyone in its view. I applaud the Map’s creators for their nifty magic which has its counterpart in today’s I-Spy technology.

 

The Taboo works something like that. The technological equivalent is a mass of satellites or cellphone towers covering all plot-able ground, that can receive signals from anyone carrying an appropriate device. But instead of an actual device, the signals received are sound waves. And if a pattern of soundwaves – Voldemort’s spoken name – is detected, an alert is sent to the bad guys that they’ve likely found a member of the resistance. For a while, our three heroes avoid using his name because of Ron’s insistence that it is bad luck even before they’ve found out about the Taboo. An exception to this was when they were in Grimmauld Place and Voldemort’s name was spoken freely. But because the old Black residence was unplottable, it seems the Taboo wasn’t triggered. I suspect the same would apply to the Room of Requirement.

 

Technologically, if the government was hunting for a fugitive, and had satellites or cell-phone towers gathering huge amounts of data, the strategy would be to find some signature that will lead to pinpointing the fugitive. This would require sifting through huge amounts of data. You want the identifying signature to be simple but unique. The Taboo is well-chosen in that regard. Perhaps this says something about the limits of magic. Coming up with a spell that will automatically allow you to find a particular individual wherever they are must be very challenging – although it can be done in a limited space as proved by the Marauder’s Map. Could a larger scale Map be conjured? I don’t know. But given what some countries are doing now with their technology to essentially spy on anyone within their borders, it’s already happening in our world. How can one make themselves unplottable in this new world? I don’t know, but the battle between surveillance and privacy from it rages on.

Flourish & Blotts

After being less-than-impressed with the storyline of the third Fantastic Beasts movie, I felt motivated to re-read the Harry Potter series. My last re-read was 2.5 years ago before the pandemic. I’ve now finished the first three books. This time around, I felt that the writing in the first book seemed weaker and the characters more caricatured. It felt like an old-school children’s book in more ways than one. For the first time, I felt that the second book was stronger than the first, and I was less annoyed by Lockhart. Maybe I need to change my ranking of the books. The third book is still superb!

 

Today’s post will focus on things that jumped out at me in one chapter of Chamber of Secrets. “Flourish & Blotts” is the chapter title and also where Hogwarts students buy their school textbooks for the new term. Early in the chapter, we read of Arthur Weasley asking Harry all about Muggle life. Plugs and the postal service are mentioned, and Arthur thinks it astounding how Muggles have adapted to live without magic with their ingenious inventions that save time. The harnessing of electricity allows us to create devices that certainly seem magical to our forebears, and one can come up with numerous examples. It makes sense to me that if magic rides on electromagnetic radiation, electricity is the appropriate rival.

 

I hadn’t thought much about the postal service, but seeing it mentioned made me think about the advantages and disadvantages of Owl Post. For one thing, you need an owl. And it needs to be healthy enough to fly. When your owl is away, you have to wait for its return. I suppose you could go to the Owl Post Office if you don’t own an owl. How do owls locate a recipient? There must be some sort of owl-data-sharing system to improve delivery efficiency. If owls didn’t communicate with each other, I suspect deliveries would take much longer unless owls had some sort of way to “know” how to find the recipient. Can a non-owl extract information from the owl network for spying purposes? I don’t know. There is no mention of anyone attempting it.

 

In the same chapter, we read that Lockhart has assigned his seven books not just to Harry’s second-year Defense of the Dark Arts class, but to all levels. (Ginny in her first-year and the Weasley twins in their fourth-year get assigned the same books.) Clearly Lockhart isn’t a good teacher, nor has he followed any prescribed curriculum where what you learn in an earlier year scaffolds the material for subsequent years. Quirrell, in Harry’s First Year, at least assigns what seems like a standard textbook. Lupin, in Harry’s Third Year, seems to be using a standard textbook that at least contains a bestiary and he designs a practical curriculum. Snape makes reference to what students should be able to tackle in their first years when he jumps ahead to discuss werewolves later in the textbook. The Standard Book of Spells seems to have levels for each year, presumably from introductory to advanced. Reading all this made me think about how one designs and scaffolds a magical curriculum. I’ve previously speculated that Lumos should be the first spell learned.

 

To get to Diagon Alley, the Weasley family travels by Floo Powder. Harry messes it up his first time, although I don’t think it’s entirely his fault. This made me think of the various transportation methods in the magical world: Floo Powder using a fireplace network, Portkeys for one-time point-to-point travel, Apparating (including side-on), broomsticks, an enchanted vehicle (flying car or motorcycle, for example), or just plain superman-type flying. Some are teleporter-like while others require traversing at some relative speed. I’d love to have a teleporter-like mode of travel. But I’m not sure our Muggle ingenuity can get us to that point – there are some significant physical limitations.

 

When Harry lands in Knockturn Alley by mistake, and spies on the Malfoys in a shop devoted to Dark Magic objects, we read about the “Hand of Glory”. When you insert a candle, it gives light only to the holder. I suppose our Muggle equivalent is night-vision goggles. Although our night-vision technology basically tries to capture the slivers of visible light available possibly coupled with collecting light at the edges of the visible, for example in the infra-red. The Hand of Glory sounds like it illuminates the visible but only to the holder of the object. It isn’t placed over the eyes, so how exactly it would do so is unclear.

 

I was pleased that so many questions tickled my brain while reading “Flourish & Blotts”. What a wonderful name for a bookstore! And now onwards to the fourth book which is also the pivotal turning point in the series.

 

P.S. For my last read of Chamber of Secrets, I blogged about what might have been if Harry was in Slytherin.

Space-filling

After watching the third Fantastic Beasts movie, and realizing how little of the previous movies I remembered, I decided to go back and watch them. The fantastic beasts are more interesting and plentiful, especially in the first movie. This time around, I found myself pondering the space-filling serpent. According to the Harry Potter Fandom Wiki, it is called an Occamy (and shown in the picture below from the wiki). The ability to grow or shrink to fill space is ‘choranaptyxism’, an invented word in the Wizarding World pulled from the Greek words for ‘space’ and ‘unfolding’. Why not use Latin instead of Greek?

 

Why does the beast grow or fill to shrink its space? I don’t know. Why doesn’t it do so when living in Newt Scamander’s garden of beasts? I don’t know either. Why does Newt ask for a teapot to trap it – shouldn’t any other container do? Possibly, it’s unclear. Maybe Newt says this in the heat of the moment to allow his comrades to focus on a solution. How does this beast change its size to fit its container? I don’t know, but I have speculated on what atomic-level forces might be affected as matter is enlarged or shrunk (it is more problematic than it looks). Then again, this is a fantastic magical beast so maybe the rules of ‘normal’ matter don’t apply as when you cast an Engorgio spell to make a spider larger (to Ron Weasley’s horror) or if (Marvel Comics) Ant-Man shrinks.

 

In an introductory chemistry class, students are taught that gases “take the shape of their container”. The size of the gas particles does not change. Rather, because of their constant motion, the particles whiz around to “fill” the container in their never-ceasing movement. Matter isn’t being resized as the container size changes. The pressure of the gas rises or falls proportionally as the volume of the container is decreased or increased respectively, provided the temperature remains constant (Boyle’s Law).

 

Also in introductory chemistry class, students learn different ‘models’ to represent molecules, one of which is called the space-filling model. This model is sort of like a gas-filled container except that (1) instead of gas particles, electrons are the constantly moving entities, and (2) there isn’t actually a boundary per se – the negatively-charged electrons stay relatively close to the positively-charged nucleus because of electrostatic attraction. The space-filling model comes into play because the electron ‘clouds’ on two different molecules cannot substantially penetrate each other because of the Pauli Exclusion Principle. Were molecules to meet in motion, they would bounce off each other, never passing through each other like ghosts.

 

This reminded me of a vignette in Tom McLeish’s book. Robert Grosseteste was a thirteenth century cleric who became Bishop of Lincoln in 1235. He incorporated what we would today call ‘science’ into his theological thoughts. One thing that puzzled him was the ‘solidity’ of matter. (It’s surprising that students today aren’t puzzled – it is strange!) McLeish writes: “If [Pauli Principle repulsion] were not the case then solid or liquid matter as we know it could not exist – all matter would simply pass through itself… think of a simple version of an atomic picture in which the atoms are really point-like particles – since this is the picture faithful to the ancient Greek atoms – the indivisible ones. At first it seems as if this might be a promising route to explain the matter we experience in terms of its hidden, and simpler, substructure… but in this case classical atomism doesn’t work. If we stay with the idea of point-like particles then solidity simply does not appear.”

 

Why don’t we just give up the idea of point-like particles and use ‘hard spheres’? This isn’t as easy as it looks because it still begs the question as why you have hard spheres. For that matter, classical mechanics (the stuff one learns in physics class) is predicated on using point-charges that give us beautiful and simple equations we can use! Without explaining the ‘bulk’ of atoms, we’re stuck in a circular argument spiraling into infinitesimal point-sized particles (which don’t exist). We had to wait until quantum mechanics to figure out Pauli repulsion – a good seven hundred years after Grosseteste became a bishop.

 

Grosseteste’s idea (in De luce) was to use light as a sort-of explanation. McLeish writes: “… light, unlike atoms, does possess a natural ‘extension’ – open a shutter and it streams in to fill the dusty air beyond uniformly and immediately. If matter cannot of itself (simple and without dimension) fill space, then maybe the operation of light on matter might endow the tiny particles with extension by carrying them, or somehow extendedness into them. Actually, [Grosseteste] is very careful to say that this source of corporality might not actually be light itself, but if not then something very like it… Remarkably, Grosseteste’s insight turns out to be more or less correct… light is space-filling in that it is a wave… the quantum waviness of matter allows it to be solid, and prevents my falling through the chair I am sitting on.”

 

Taking this a step further, Grosseteste “makes an extraordinary leap of imagination: he attempts to apply his theory of local matter to the structure of the universe as a whole. Beginning with a flash of light, the entire universe is filled and expanded by its self-propagation until it has reached huge dimensions. Solidifying in its exterior shell, re-reradiated light from this shell of ‘perfected matter’ then concentrates matter back towards the center, leaving the successive planetary shells in its wake, and the unrefined elements of fire, air, water and earth at the center.” It’s clever. Grosseteste comes up with a ‘Let There Be Light’ creation of Aristotle’s cosmos. As an aside, Grosseteste was also interested in how matter might manifest in different Aristotelian ‘accidental’ forms – because he was interested in how one might explain Catholic theology’s concept of transsubtantation – the bread becomes the ‘body’ of Jesus Christ in some participatory way even though it still looks and tastes like bread to the eater.

 

Is there a creative explanation for the space-filling serpent in the magical world of Fantastic Beasts? I don’t know. I’d love to get my hands on a standard Hogwarts textbook: Magical Theory by Adalbert Waffling might be one. Or maybe Newt’s textbook. But I have a feeling that the explanation will leave me wanting. Or I need to ghostwrite the book with an infusion of the magic of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics isn’t astrology, but sometimes feels like it. (That book has been written.) So as you’re sitting on your chair reading this, take a moment to ponder why you don’t fall through it. The weirdness of quantum mechanics that gives rise to the space-filling model of molecules gives us solidity!

FB3: Private Brawl

So I watched the third Fantastic Beasts movie. I had low expectations, thus the movie didn’t disappoint. I felt he first movie was the better than the second movie which was better than this third installment, except I can hardly remember anything from the second movie suggesting it was quite forgettable. This third movie was rather confusing, although that was partly baked into the storyline. There is a hint that the main antagonist can scry the future, but how or why is unclear, and it was nowhere as interesting as the demiguise. It also required the protagonists to be unpredictable and confusing.

 

Subtitled “The Secrets of Dumbledore”, I feel that the movie tries to capitalize on what made the Deathly Hallows one of the best books of the Harry Potter series. I found Harry Potter rather whiny in Book 5, and that downgraded it compared to some of the earlier books in my opinion. What elevated the last two books was by moving the focus away from Harry’s life by exploring the lives of the others. Albus Dumbledore’s past is a pivotal part of the final book. The movie tries to impute greater import to events in his younger days, giving a somber weight of seriousness – which also weighs down the movie in my opinion. Further weighing it down was the mirroring of the German Third Reich setting. I was not impressed.

 

Are there fantastic beasts? Yes. One of these creatures and its special powers is pivotal to the movie. Newt Scamander’s bowtruckle and niffler companions get their moments to shine, and his case can locomote and protect itself reminding me of the legged-box in the Discworld novels. There’s also one very large beast residing in a wizarding prison pre-Azkaban along with its minions. Dementors not available, perhaps? I’m being purposefully vague to avoid giving spoilers of the movie for those who care about such things.

 

There are some clever bits of magic and the special effects in some of the action scenes are enthralling. This was to be expected in this sort of movie. Teleportation was employed in a variety of ways consistent with the books – with more flair! The cleverest bit of magic though was something akin to creating a private eminent domain to do wizarding battle that separates the duelers from others. In one instance, it mirrored the Upside Down of Stranger Things. It’s not clear exactly how that magic was cast, but it reminded me a tad of similar duels in the animated manga series Jujutsu Kaisen. In any case, this isn’t completely new to Harry Potter in the instance when the meeting of spells from Harry and Voldemort’s wands (sharing the phoenix core) separates them from the onlookers in Book 4. It’s magic allowing one to have a private brawl, and maybe do less damage to the actual physical surroundings.

 

My favorite character in the movie? Jacob Kowalksi the Muggle. He provides levity and heart to the movie, otherwise in short supply. The good baker in what would have otherwise been a half-baked movie. And that’s my FB3 update.

First Spell

What is the first spell that Harry Potter learned at Hogwarts?

 

I don’t know. In his first week of class, “there was a lot more to magic, as Harry quickly found out, than waving your wand and saying a few funny words.” In Astronomy, Herbology, Potions, and History of Magic, there may not have been much or any spellcasting. Defense Against the Dark Arts should have had some, but Quirrell didn’t teach any. That leaves Charms and Transfiguration. No mention is made of what Flitwick asks his first-years to do in class, but McGonagall has her students attempt to turn a match into a needle. No one succeeded on their first try but Hermione came closest.

 

It’s not until the midnight duel when Alohomora, the door-unlocking spell, is cast. But it’s Hermione that does so. The next spell mentioned is in Charms class on Halloween morning: Wingardium Leviosa – to levitate objects. Ron is doing poorly at it. Presumably Harry has also tried. And once again Hermione is the first one to cast the spell successfully. Later we are told that over Christmas break, Harry sneaks into the Restricted Section of the library, but Harry lights a lamp rather than casting Lumos. Can Harry cast any spells successfully in his first semester? I’m not sure.

 

What spell should Harry have learned first? I would like to claim it should be Lumos. It’s a simple spell that produces light at the tip of your wand. Like turning on a tiny flashlight, or nowadays, your mobile phone magically works just as well. Since the purpose of a wand is to focus energy, casting a spell involves absorbing energy into the wand and then emitting energy to produce the effects of the spell. Since the wand is made of matter, and all matter contains atoms and electrons, the effect of absorbing energy is to excite the electrons from the ground state into an excited state. Electrons in an excited state are unstable, and so an easy path for them to become more stable is to lower their energy by returning to the ground state. Conservation of energy means photons are emitted. If the wavelength of these photons is in the visible range (400-700nm), then we observe it as light.

 

Other spells would require channeling that energy to say, levitate an object, or turn the latch of a locked door. But that requires more from the spellcaster. After your wand has absorbed energy, you need to direct towards a very specific task. Emitting light from your wand, however, just requires you to absorb that energy and then let it go as emission. This is easy to do if some of the compounds in the wand have energy level differences that correspond to photons in the visible range. Wood has many of these types of compounds, i.e., organic molecules with a bunch of C=C double bonds in conjugated pi-systems. Simple as pie. So I expect Lumos should have been the first spell Harry learned, but who really knows what goes on in Hogwarts? I’ve yet to get my hands on a more detailed curriculum.

Mirror of Galadriel

I decided to revisit Lord of the Rings, having recently read a collection of Tolkien’s letters and a book about the philosophy behind Tolkien’s writings. Lord of the Rings is one of two fiction sets that I regularly re-read, the other being Harry Potter which is still a distant second. It’s been a while since I’ve seen Peter Jackson’s trilogy in a while, so I was pleased that I didn’t imagine the characters as the actors in those movies. And I did read the books many times before watching the movies, so I have different associated imagery.

 

It took me a week to get through Fellowship of the Ring. Tolkien’s descriptive writing is wonderful and I’m still enamored by the sagas of Middle Earth. Lothlorien jumped out at me a little more this time around so that’s what I’ll discuss in today’s post. The setting is paradoxically ethereal yet also down-to-earth (in an up-in-the-trees way). There seems something magical about the place to first-time visitors, and Sam mentions being interested in seeing ‘Elf-magic’.

 

Galadriel offers Sam and Frodo a look in her mirror, her version of ‘magic’. It’s Pensieve-like in a way – there’s a basin with some liquid that you look into – but the mirror is much more than memory storage. Galadriel can command the mirror to reveal certain scenes if one wanted to see something in particular. But she also says that the mirror can show things “unbidden”. It may reveal things that are strange and difficult to interpret, yet possible much more useful. One challenge is that you don’t know if the mirror is showing you “things that were, things that are, or things that yet may be”.

 

One drawback about being a scientist is automatic the unbidden thought that comes to me: How does it work? I suppose the scientist is the magician’s bane, constantly trying to reveal the mechanics of how and likely missing the more important aspects that magic is trying to convey. In any case, when Sam looks into the mirror he sees things that he cares about – although where these scenes are in the timeline is less certain. Frodo’s viewing is bound up with the ring of power he carries, its history, and the powers that strive for and against it. The mirror, it seems, can detect the viewer’s desire. What perhaps happens next is that it somehow taps into the multiverse and flashes through prominent scenes past, present, and future. It’s not so much that it transcends space and time, but rather it can flit back and forth roaming through the ‘block’ known to physicists as spacetime.

 

Somehow this seeing of what is normally inaccessible opens up other seeing possibilities. Frodo now recognizes that Galadriel carries one of the three Elven rings of power. Nenya, the ring of adamant, is associated with elemental water. Presumably it’s an important aid to Galadriel’s ‘magic’ mirror. Sam also gets a glimpse of what seems like a shining star between Galadriel’s fingers. The Elven rings were forged by Celebrimbor, the descendant of Feanor who most inherited his skill of jewel-making. But what exactly is a ring of power? That is a longer subject for another time.

 

As the fellowship departs Lothlorien, they are given gifts. The ‘magic’ of the Elves manifests itself in the cloaks that blend in with their surroundings, the light yet cunning boats, the strength-giving waybread, the Elven rope that seems to understand the user’s needs. These are all made from materials of earth and plants; the earthiest of these is Sam’s box of earth which will yield a seemingly magical garden with a mallorn tree in its center. The knowledge of using natural materials to craft the best sort of cloak, boat, and rope, is a subtle sort of magic. As the ‘eldest race’, the Elves have been around a long time and have learned to coax the secrets of the natural world of Middle Earth. There are no large mechanical devices and machines such as found in Orthanc as Saruman raises his army with his technological ‘magic’ that cares not for the earth. Saruman’s downfall is swift. Perhaps ours will be too.