User blog:Airagog/Calculating the power of each magical spell

I was roleplaying recently using magic when I thought of an interesting idea: exactly how destructive is each magical attack and how could it be used most effectively? As such I'm going to take a look at exactly how much each magical attack could harm someone. Though this is highly dependent on a few things so I am going to assume a lot things in this article:

I'm going to assume water is pure H20 and no trace elements. This is extremely important as trace elements could ass to the weight and therefore destructive power of water.

I'm also going to assume that the average earth spell is pure rock at roughly 1 and a half foot in diameter. The reason being is that a 3 foot rock made of granite would weigh roughly 1 ton as granite weighs about 180 lbs per cubic foot. However, an earth spell would not be pure granite, it can either be heavier or lighter, this is going to be for arguments sake alone.

Air is perhaps the trickiest son of a b of all the elements the reason being is that air can differ MASSIVELY between how much it weighs. Not only because of the various elements found that range between 12 and 40 amu (which is roughly 12 to 40 grams in one mole of the stuff). Given this and the fact that we aren't quite sure how many moles there are due to not knowing how much pressure is surrounding the average wind spell, I will say that your average wind spell weighs roughly 4 pounds or 1.8 kg.

All of this and throughout the article I will assume various things such as point of impact for earth and water spells.

Fire
Fire is the highest level spell grade and the easiest to cover. Reason being, unlike everything else, we are given a fairly clear relative scale. We know that superheat can melt any metal and is a fairly low-level spell. Steel with a percent carbon at roughly 2.1%, (which is where coal comes in) melts at roughly 1100 degrees celcius. To put that on a relative scale, lava is roughly 1000 degrees celcius. While fire has no force due to the fact that it has no mass and is a reaction, fire relies completely on this heat. However, what is terrifying is that steel is not the most heat resistive substance in runescape and therefore not the highest temperature this fire can reach. Instead, that belongs to runite. To calculate, I'm going to use the armor rating of a steel platebody which is 76 and compare it to the 195 armor rating of a runite one. which would mean that there is a roughly 2.5 ratio. Meaning that fire at close to the same level as fire blast could get as hot as 2822 degrees celcius which is roughly 3/5 of the surface of the sun.

Fire would be most effective against armored warriors, reducing their armor to molten metal that would painful latch on to its owners skin, meaning an agonizing and brutal death. Or, at least it would be unless something far more brutal was happening. Human bone melts at roughly 1670 degrees celcius, meaning that instead of charring a body, they would literally be melted on the floor and possibly start even evaporating.

Water
Water is a little bit trickier than fire. Thankfully, unlike air, water is limited to exactly how dense it can be. Water weighs roughly 62.4 pounds per one cubic foot of water. I am going to be using this as a base line, the reason being is that even if you were to increase the size of water, you would also be increasing surface area and therefore keeping a constant ratio of psi. Assuming that the water is in a smooth ball, an approximate drag coefficient would be 0.1 meaning that the terminal velocity of water would be roughly 200 m/s. However, this would only be if gravity and all other forces were acting with it. As such I am going to assume that it travels at roughly 1/10 which would be 26.822 m/s which is about the equivilent of about 60 mph which seems to be about how fast it moves when cast by a player. Assuming this takes roughly 3 seconds to hit, which would allow the player to have time to move or react which is standard in most roleplays, this would give it an acceleration of roughly 8.9 m/s^2. Using this to calcuate its force, we learn that it has roughly 252.76 newtons per cubic foot of water, but exactly WHAT does this mean? Well, this would depend on the point of impact. That is to say, how small the sphere was at the point of hitting someone. This would be roughly 9 newtons per cm which translates to roughly 13 PSI which doesn't sound like much, but keep in mind that the skull can fracture as little as 15 psi, depending on where it is hit and how evenly this weight is distrubuted. As such, it seems that water would be best for non-lethal force, or used for creative purposes such as defense which is a very interesting prospect. One cubic foot dry air weighs roughly .07 pounds at room temperature. Compared to that of 62.4, you have a much more dense area that is able to flow and therefore able to defend much easier.

Earth
Reserved for now.

Air
Reserved for now. This will take a lot of calculations.