[Element]Bending is the best

[Xihirli]

Also a lot of green energy. Could go towards a sustainable future.

What's the limit on how powerful the lightning is? The voltage and such?
The people working at the power plant were visibly drained. Does lightning creation eat up calories?

[Chen]

Really any bending should be consuming calories. Like in the super powers thread, any bending makes no real sense from a thermodynamics point of view. The amount of energy that they're getting out of their bending FAR exceeds any they can be taking in via eating or the like. As such any of the bending seems able to produce unlimited energy, if there's no real energy cost to the practitioner.

[-D-]

Really any bending should be consuming calories. Like in the super powers thread, any bending makes no real sense from a thermodynamics point of view. The amount of energy that they're getting out of their bending FAR exceeds any they can be taking in via eating or the like. As such any of the bending seems able to produce unlimited energy, if there's no real energy cost to the practitioner.

Maybe they are like FullMetal Alchemist, bending the energy of the Earth. On the other hand it's magic.

[Chen]

Maybe they are like FullMetal Alchemist, bending the energy of the Earth. On the other hand it's magic.

Well bending is essentially magic reskinned. And any magic in most fiction hilariously breaks thermodynamics.

Thinking about it, I'm not sure which bending would be best at actually producing energy. Fire can produce electricity directly, but air and water could easily just run a turbine to get electricity too. Earth probably could as well, though it would be very different than any current turbines.

[Mato]

Earth probably could as well, though it would be very different than any current turbines.

Not really. Metalbenders can spin them directly and lavabenders can provide friction created energy like a nuclear reactor uses heat to power a steam turbine. A basic earthbender is the only one that'd need something extra. Like a stone based lever so the several tons of rock they can move can be turned into mechanical torque, kind of like those squeeze-powered flashlights you played with as a kid, just with about a thousand times more power per squeeze.

[Xihirli]

lavabenders can provide friction created energy

Or geothermal energy.

[TeChameleon]

If you're charging a capacitor with lightning and then using it to charge a phone, wouldn't it be ridiculously large? All to avoid needing to plug in a phone?

*shrug*

Beats me.

Mostly stuck my nose back into the thread to post this, which has been floating around in my head ever since the lightningbending-to-charge-phone bit tangent started up.

Also, I could be wrong, but vanilla waterbending's ice-to-water-and-back always struck me as the most thermodynamics-defying, especially since it seemed borderline effortless and happened all-but-instantaneously. It takes rather more heat to turn a big block of ice into water than most people would expect, especially since the water that benders fling around doesn't seem to be especially cold, at least going by the reaction of the people that get hit by it.

[mikelala]

Not really very modern ones though.

[Mato]

It takes rather more heat to turn a big block of ice into water than most people would expect,

Yeah but it's "magic".

Like if you stick to energy cannot be destroyed, every time Iceman from the X-Men transforms he shoots a heat wave out of his body that'd melt everything near by. I think V-Sauce3 has a nice video on that, but in-world nothing like that happens.

[TeChameleon]

Yeah but it's "magic".

Like if you stick to energy cannot be destroyed, every time Iceman from the X-Men transforms he shoots a heat wave out of his body that'd melt everything near by. I think V-Sauce3 has a nice video on that, but in-world nothing like that happens.

... *snerk*

Maybe that's where firebenders get their heat from; the energy waterbenders use to turn ice into water and vice versa gets stored in the spirit world someplace, and firebenders can draw from it as well

[golentan]

*shrug*

Beats me.

Mostly stuck my nose back into the thread to post this, which has been floating around in my head ever since the lightningbending-to-charge-phone bit tangent started up.

Also, I could be wrong, but vanilla waterbending's ice-to-water-and-back always struck me as the most thermodynamics-defying, especially since it seemed borderline effortless and happened all-but-instantaneously. It takes rather more heat to turn a big block of ice into water than most people would expect, especially since the water that benders fling around doesn't seem to be especially cold, at least going by the reaction of the people that get hit by it.

Maybe bending relies on the energy in the target to do work, shifting energy around without destroying it, like if a waterbender "creates ice" it shifts the heat to a liquid core and the temperatures will even out if not maintained, and when they "melt ice" there's a crystalline core somewhere in that water form where the heat was pushed out from to hit the melting point for the rest (could be hard to spot inside a mobile wave or tentacle or whatever). Pulling water all over the place could be converting heat to kinetic energy by... whatever medium bending works on, dropping the temperature of the moved body fractionally. All the permanent ice-bending created structures do have their roots in the ocean, which is a MAGNIFICENT heat sink.

Heck, firebending is dependent on good breath control (a biological process), and one food calorie is a kilocalorie, 4184 joules, enough to raise the temperature of a kg of air by 200 degrees celsius if you blast it out all at once IIRC (21 joules/kg to raise air temp 1 degree), perhaps the typical firebender is combusting some of their biological energy reserve and forcing it into the air around them by bending techniques, explaining perhaps why the fire nation seems to favor meaty and fatty foods (high caloric density) and giving extra weight to the concepts of the sun warriors (fire is life), and maybe why exhausted firebenders have so much trouble, and how even plump uncle iroh became a chiseled slab of muscle when he felt the need to call upon his powers and training more seriously again (do we ever see an obese firebender who makes regular use of their powers ever?).

It also fits with the repeated assertions of the benders that bending is not magic, and is about changing the energy of their medium, as briefly explained by the Lion Tortoise. You are not creating something from nothing, you are taking energy and transitioning it from one form to another: Fire-benders gain strength by drawing from the heat of the sun, needing to know its position to draw on that energy, waterbenders whose techniques focus more on kinetic motion benefit from the moon's pull the same as the tides do, and overlaying it all is the mechanisms of the avatarverse soul, and the spirit realm, allowing humans to tap and shift the energy in the world around them, and allowing the determined, gifted, and blessed to sever or manipulate the tie between spiritual and material via spiritbending/bloodbending.

Or maybe it's magic and I ain't gotta splain... well, you know.

[Mato]

Maybe bending relies on the energy in the target to do work, shifting energy around without destroying it, like if a waterbender "creates ice" it shifts the heat to a liquid core

That I can only imagine to glow like a light bulb and melt the ice, and the people trapped inside, within seconds.

Heck, firebending is dependent on good breath control (a biological process), and one food calorie is a kilocalorie, 4184 joules, enough to raise the temperature of a kg of air by 200 degrees celsius if you blast it out all at once IIRC (21 joules/kg to raise air temp 1 degree),

Except firebenders can light wood on fire so you're short by at least 233 degrees to even light paper thin... Well paper.

It's also one thirty-third of the energy a cheap butane lighter has and those burn at around 3,590 degrees and they suck at lightning entire trees on fire at once so that's some cool information you can use later.

It also fits with the repeated assertions of the benders that bending is not magic,

Spirit world? The Ocean and Moon Spirits and their quantum connection with turning the moon red and destroying waterbending when injured? How does a ball of ice flying past a planet improve it's firebenders? Koh the face stealer who instantly teleports newly grafted skin on his face instantly? Who claimed bending isn't magic?

Or maybe it's magic and I ain't gotta splain... well, you know.

I'm going to go with that. Any highly advanced technology would appear as magic doesn't just mean magic is technology, but unexplained technology is magic.

[golentan]

Except firebenders can light wood on fire so you're short by at least 233 degrees to even light paper thin... Well paper.

It's also one thirty-third of the energy a cheap butane lighter has and those burn at around 3,590 degrees and they suck at lightning entire trees on fire at once so that's some cool information you can use later.

One: You seem to be thinking I said degrees Fahrenheit, not degrees celsius. An additional 200 C is twice the boiling heat of water on top of the starting temperature.

Two, "One Food Calorie can produce 1 kg of superheated air" is not an implication that a high powered firebender is limited to burning one calorie at a time if that theory were to be true. Second: A butane lighter burns at 2000 degrees C under ideal conditions, but is lighting a couple cubic centimeters at most to start, which under the US standard model weigh about a milligram each: My example was for a kilogram of air, a comparable compression would be... quite hot.

The energy density of butane is 27.7 MJ/L, the energy density of Protein is 16.6 MJ/kg, the energy density of body fat is about 32.2 MJ/kg, a quick check suggests your butane lighter contains about 5 ml of fuel and since the energy density of a mL is about the same as a gram of fat... Comparisons of fireball size are left as an exercise to the reader.

[Chen]

Heck, firebending is dependent on good breath control (a biological process), and one food calorie is a kilocalorie, 4184 joules, enough to raise the temperature of a kg of air by 200 degrees celsius if you blast it out all at once IIRC (21 joules/kg to raise air temp 1 degree),

Uh where'd you get that 21 joules/kg from? Specific heat capacity of air is around 1 kJ/kg - K (constant pressure) or 0.75 kJ/kg -K (constant volume). You're off by a factor of 35-50 there, which makes it much less impressive. Also considering how much food energy just goes to making the human body work, it's hard to get a good feel about how much can be done with that energy. Second law of thermodynamics here hurts just as much if not more than the first law.

[golentan]

Uh where'd you get that 21 joules/kg from? Specific heat capacity of air is around 1 kJ/kg - K (constant pressure) or 0.75 kJ/kg -K (constant volume). You're off by a factor of 35-50 there, which makes it much less impressive. Also considering how much food energy just goes to making the human body work, it's hard to get a good feel about how much can be done with that energy. Second law of thermodynamics here hurts just as much if not more than the first law.

Honestly, when I was lining up my stuff I grabbed the wrong conversion factor by accident.

The comparison of grams of fat to milliliters of butane should be good, I apologize for the error.

[Xihirli]

I think we're short-selling what Airbending can do likely because Aang was about eleven when he stopped learning Airbending from living teachers, and he taught Tenzin, who taught every other airbender. I'd like to think Airbending can do a lot of things we just don't know about because... you know... they all died in a fire.

[Mato]

I'd like to think Airbending can do a lot of things we just don't know about because... you know... they all died in a fire.

Actually Aang was already a master and several of his "common" tricks appear big deals in other arts, like breathing fire out of your mouth? Aang could super breath air effortlessly. Korra's run the writers were hyping about air finally getting it's special ability which turned out to be a huge disappointment due to the already huge amount of flying capability in the series. Zaheer even showed us a different, more lethal, style of bending that is functionally equivalent to blood/metal bending by finessing the ability and applying it on an otherwise unexpected target. We were also shown that airbenders can sense disturbances in the air across their skin similar to earth's seismic sense with earth and what group scaled bending does.

What airbending lacks is an unexpected ability. Like fire controlling lightning, water healing people, and earth dipping fire's traits. Air could have gotten something that has very little to do with air or gases in general. They do have enhanced speed and reflexes over everyone else in the series that could very well be air's true advanced talent, but we're so used to our protagonists being superior to nameless mooks no one really paid any attention to it.

[gooddragon1]

Actually Aang was already a master and several of his "common" tricks appear big deals in other arts, like breathing fire out of your mouth? Aang could super breath air effortlessly. Korra's run the writers were hyping about air finally getting it's special ability which turned out to be a huge disappointment due to the already huge amount of flying capability in the series. Zaheer even showed us a different, more lethal, style of bending that is functionally equivalent to blood/metal bending by finessing the ability and applying it on an otherwise unexpected target. We were also shown that airbenders can sense disturbances in the air across their skin similar to earth's seismic sense with earth and what group scaled bending does.

What airbending lacks is an unexpected ability. Like fire controlling lightning, water healing people, and earth dipping fire's traits. Air could have gotten something that has very little to do with air or gases in general. They do have enhanced speed and reflexes over everyone else in the series that could very well be air's true advanced talent, but we're so used to our protagonists being superior to nameless mooks no one really paid any attention to it.

Pressure bending could be interesting? Or go more magical/Sci fi/handwavium with intangibility? Follows with their mobility. I mean, water gets healing.

[khadgar567]

Pressure bending could be interesting? Or go more magical/Sci fi/handwavium with intangibility? Follows with their mobility. I mean, water gets healing.

pressure bending will work but you might want to bit careful with air bending muscle bound big guy suddenly pulling franky from one piece out of his arse which make damn hilarious to watch ( currently laughing my a*s off from thinking it).

[Forum Explorer]

Pressure bending could be interesting? Or go more magical/Sci fi/handwavium with intangibility? Follows with their mobility. I mean, water gets healing.

According to the wiki the Spirit Journey's was an airbending technique.

[Reddish Mage]

On the subject of thermodynamics. I really don't see how one could think the laws of thermodynamics was necessarily being violated. Its not like energy or matter is literally being created out of nowhere and the actions of the benders (or everyone else for that matter) is explicitly creating consequences in the spirit world which interacts with the physical world in weird ways that aren't explained. There's tons of room for additional for additional forces, elements (I'd start with the basic four...), and spatial-temporal dimensions that a theoretical physicist with too much time on their hands with a lot of hand-waving could turn into a story at least as consistent drama.

Whatever's going on clearly violates all sorts of laws, but entropy can tropy the way it always tropes.

[The Glyphstone]

Actually Aang was already a master and several of his "common" tricks appear big deals in other arts, like breathing fire out of your mouth? Aang could super breath air effortlessly. Korra's run the writers were hyping about air finally getting it's special ability which turned out to be a huge disappointment due to the already huge amount of flying capability in the series. Zaheer even showed us a different, more lethal, style of bending that is functionally equivalent to blood/metal bending by finessing the ability and applying it on an otherwise unexpected target. We were also shown that airbenders can sense disturbances in the air across their skin similar to earth's seismic sense with earth and what group scaled bending does.

What airbending lacks is an unexpected ability. Like fire controlling lightning, water healing people, and earth dipping fire's traits. Air could have gotten something that has very little to do with air or gases in general. They do have enhanced speed and reflexes over everyone else in the series that could very well be air's true advanced talent, but we're so used to our protagonists being superior to nameless mooks no one really paid any attention to it.

That was the sort of thinking I was using when I proposed "lightbending"/invisibility/holograms earlier in the thread. It's fuzzily, tentatively justifiable as an air-related ability, and it'd be a primarily defensive power that would suit the pacifistic nature of the air nomads quite well.