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/sci/ - Science & Math

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5751577 No.5751577 [Reply] [Original]

/a/utist here, looking for a little more information on the mechanics of vectors. Character from a series, raildex, can manipulate them, seemingly without limit, and from my current understanding that makes him broken as hell.

So vectors are essentially the trajectory and magnitude a force? (the character's, accelerator's, power is manipulating vectors, redirection and magnitude).

I gather that that is a very broad target, but specifically I want to know how it would effect elements, fire, lightning, etc. I get that it could be used to negate the physical side effects of those elements. But more specifically the direct consequences, burns I guess. It raises a few questions for me as I never did physics at school.
* Is heat vector related? (it radiates so I would assume so but it at least seems less direct than, for example, force)

* Does electricity exist as a vector? I know virtually nothing about the mechanics of electricity in general.

*Lastly, what I assume is an incredibly dumb question, things are not limited by terminal velocity, right? Terminal velocity means the maximum fall speed within out atmosphere doesn't it? rather than the maximum speed something can achieve?

>> No.5751594

I haven't been following it, but did Accelerator appear in Railgun S now?
Great, another awesome character ruined by secondaryfags.

>> No.5751600

Vector is just a way of expressing something with direction. Things like heat or mass are scalars because they have only value, things like force or acceleration are vectors because they have value and direction.

That's pretty much all there is to know about vectors, you can do rest of thinking yourself.

>> No.5751605

And yes, there is plenty of vectors in electricity.

>> No.5751660

>>5751577
anything with magnitude and direction can be modeled with a vector (velocity, acceleration, forces)

>> No.5751673

>can manipulate vectors
That doesn't make any sense, because vectors are just abstract mathematical objects. They're not physical "things" can you can touch or manipulate.

>> No.5751677

>>5751600
>Vector is just a way of expressing something with direction

Wrong.

>> No.5751686

>>5751594
Yes he's appeared in the latest ep.

>>5751600
Could you be more specific with what scalers are?

>>5751605
In or as a result of?

>>5751673
It is a simplified version of the characters ability.

>> No.5751687

>>5751673
The series in general is quite scientifically accurate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NkdEfvmr5g

>> No.5751689

>>5751594
So I just downloaded episode 5 hoping to prove myself incorrect and apparently he did.

To OP, maybe fucking watch fucking Index (or better yet READ it) to understand Accelerator's power rather than asking /sci/?
And no, heat is not a vector in real life, but in Index it is.

>> No.5751691

>>5751677
OP here, so it is more than something moving along a path and the speed with which it does it?

>> No.5751695

>>5751691
A vector is an element of a vector space. Look up what that means. You might want to take a class or read a book on linear algebra to get a basic understanding.

>> No.5751697

>>5751689
Ok, that makes sense to me then. Just seen him walk through an explosion unscathed and it seemed wrong to me.

>> No.5751699

>>5751687
>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NkdEfvmr5g
That didn't seem very accurate to me. They didn't even explain what the thought experiment was, they just had some nonsense quantum-mysticism crap about "making your own reality." Not even slightly related to Schrodinger's cat.

>> No.5751700

>>5751699
Can you explain Schrodinger's cat? Like what is the hermitian operator having "dead" and "alive" as eigenvalues?

>> No.5751702

>>5751697
The reason the explosion didn't affect him was because he has his ability set to reflect movement-related vectors by default. He has to use effort to control vectors in any other way. Again, watch Index or ask /a/ rather than /sci/.

>> No.5751707

>>5751700
OP wasn't the cat argument against theoretical physics? Basically pointing out that there is no such thing as a magical live/dead cat and that things do have an assigned value regardless of observation?

>> No.5751716

>>5751700
In the case of a single particle, the operator would be the S-matrix operator with:

<div class="math">|\langle f|S|i \rangle|^2=|\langle i|S|i \rangle|^2=0.5</div>
where "i" represents the multiparticle state where the significant particle has not decayed and "f" represents where it has. The actual physical process isn't usually explained in the thought experiment, but it would probably be something like neutron decay, and then calculating the S-matrix requires lattice methods and a whole bunch of other shit that gets really complicated.

>> No.5751721

>>5751702
I know his powers, but ya'll have said that Heat is and isn't a vector. Which was my primary question. Also it has been said that his power's wouldn't actually work the way they are described, thus my confusion and desire to ask elsewhere.

>> No.5751720

>>5751686
>In or as a result of?
Electricity is modeled with "vector fields," so it's all vectors.

>> No.5751725
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5751725

>>5751700
It's not hard to construct an operator that does effectively that. For example, consider the number of protons in the box marked in red. Then pick a threshold for the number of protons in that box that would reasonably indicate the cat was in the alive position, and run the number of protons through a step function with your chosen threshold. You now have an operator that's 0 if the cat is dead and 1 if the cat is alive.

>> No.5751727

>>5751721
Heat is a vector in the Index/Railgun world. Whether it is in real life is irrelevant.
The characters' powers work because of something called Personal Reality; that's what Komoe is talking about in the end of video that was posted regarding Schrödinger's Cat. They are "scientific" only superficially.

>> No.5751743

can he also manipulate vectors in Hilbert space? becasue then he can create + destroy any matter in any configuration. so he can basically control anything.

>> No.5751744

>>5751743
Are you forgetting about the hidden variables?

>> No.5751746

>>5751727
I don't particularly care about the raildex world, it just confused me as to whether or not a natural radiation was the same as a force which was measurable by vectors.

>> No.5751748

>>5751727
well heat flux is a vector.

>> No.5751752

>>5751743
OP: I don't know what what Hilbert space is but apparently he can control the air, the earth's gravitation and the Earth's surface, plus he can manipulate things that are touching my by proxy, so yeah virtually limitless if you consider all that,

>> No.5751756

>>5751721
Heat is the measurement of the average velocities of the particles that make up a body.

"Heat" is transferred from one fast atom hitting a slower atom.

Accelerator entirely reflects these fast atoms (Reverses the directional value of their vectors, maintains their magnitude) and so doesn't absorb the heat.

The series is pretty decent in regards to scientific literacy, for the first few novels anyway. If you compile all of your questions into one post I'll probably be able to answer all of them.

>> No.5751757

>>5751727
You're an idiot
>>5751756

>> No.5751766

>>5751756
Mainly wanted to know if radiation was considered a force which you just cleared up.
Secondary question was whether velocity was limited by mass. Can something exceed terminal velocity? My understanding is that it can't but I could well be wrong, again, I don't know this stuff.
If it is, then his breaking stuff with a stomp or a punch thing would be bullshit because he does not appear ot have much mass.

>> No.5751768

>>5751757
Why? Do explain. What I said is entirely correct.

>> No.5751769
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5751769

>>5751744
Since reality in Raildex is personal they must be using the relational interpretation.

>> No.5751778

>>5751756
>>5751757
heat is the statistical attribute which is not a vector, but yes, you can change it by shifting the individual particles vectors.

>> No.5751793

>>5751766
Depends on the type of radiation, but all moving particles have vectors anyway so he can selectively reflect them.

Velocity is in no way /limited/ by mass, and terminal velocity is just the maximum speed something will reach in freefall. If you were in a jet at terminal velocity, then turned the engines on and started going towards the ground faster, you've be exceeding terminal velocity (Relative to the surface of the Earth).

A vector is a measurement of both the direction and magnitude of a force. Let's say Accelerator punches you. As his fist makes contact, he changes the magnitude of the vector (In this case, the force of the punch) to something absurdly high.

He doesn't just pull the energy to do that out of nowhere though, he typically borrows the Earth's orbital momentum and redirects it.

F = ma, yo

>>5751768
Heat isn't a vector anywhere, but the vehicle of heat transfer is a vector. Don't be obtuse.

>> No.5751798

Apologies for poor grammar/communication, I haven't slept in a long while.

>> No.5751808

http://toarumajutsunoindex.wikia.com/wiki/Accelerator_%28ability%29

Don't read anything else about his abilities unless you want to spoil yourself hardcore (Unlikely that any more seasons of Index will be animated though, so meh)

>> No.5751822

>>5751793
Ok, this makes sense to me now. Thank you for that.

>> No.5751846

>>5751577
gODDAM YOU ARE RETARDED!

>> No.5751940

>>5751846
You're welcome?