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How can a Wall of Force be made frictionless?

Sejs said:
You're really going to have to forgive my ignorance here Storyteller, but how does cavitation relate to force fields? Cavitation's a hydrodynamic principle, yes?

Air is also a fluid. :)

Using Olympos as an example: there a giant cable car (about the size of a two story house) running along most of the eur-asain continent. With a forcefield in place, it does about 200 km/h without dealing with wind resistance or shear.
 
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Plane Sailing said:
Having said that, I've not read the book you reference. How do "cavitation force fields" work in that book? What are the benefits and restrictions of them?

The forcefields are frictionless, allowing vehicles to hit supersonic speeds without dealing wind wind resistance. An example is a 6 man vehicle going from somewhere in North America to Machu Pichu in about 35 min (sub orbital flight) without huge thrusters.

I believe the fields also improve a vehicles maneuverability. You're still effected by gravity (still need to achieve escape velocity if you want to leave the planet).
 

I admit it's been a while since my college physics classes, but even a frictionless surface is not going to eliminate wind restance; the cable car still has to move the air occupying the space in front of it out of the way.

Imagine wrapping most of a baseball bat in magical tape that's sticky on one side and frictionless on the other.

Now hit a fastball with it.

The batter will feel the impact, and the ball will have it's velocity adjusted.

Sure, the ball will tend to slip off the bat unless the striking surface of the bat is exactly perpendicular to the vector of the (assumed perfectly spherical) baseball, but the bat will still impart energy to the ball.
 

Pyrex said:
I admit it's been a while since my college physics classes, but even a frictionless surface is not going to eliminate wind restance; the cable car still has to move the air occupying the space in front of it out of the way.

It doesn't completely negate it in the book either (a sonie re-entering from space still generated a plasma field).
 


Veigle said:
I believe Helium at -400 is frictionless to itself, or to anything passing through it. It would not, however, act as a perfect lubricant. It in fact has a lubrication effect of nearly 0. Instead of acting as a "Go between" for 2 surfaces, it would be extremely good at getting out of the way.

Normally, surfaces viewed at high magnification (or even at the molecular level) are incredibly rough terrain, and it is the massive mountains and deep valleys scraping over each other that create friction.
Oil works when layers of the liquid form a film over the surface of a material. This film fills in the "Valleys" and rides above the "mountains" as well. 2 surfaces covered with oil touch each other, instead of the surfaces of the layers the oil films are attached too. As oil has innately very little friction between itself, and the surfaces are (by hydrodynamic nature) very smooth even at the molecular level, friction is reduced.

A force field would act as a perfect lubricant, as it has no "Surface" for the other material to scrape against.

While this surface is in fact frictionless, that does not mean that there is no resistance to movement across it. That would depend on exactly what the nature of the "Force" is (no star wars jokes please)

An example would be if you took a large chunk of Aluminum and tried to move it quickly through a strong magnetic field. The result would be that the faster you tried to move it, the more resistance you would encounter, even though you never touch anything. In fact, the metal would quickly become to hot to hold onto. (I have experienced this first hand).

In the end:
There is no way to define the true properties "Force Field" until we actually create one
The resistance to motion can not be determined logically
The surface would in fact frictionless,

This should mean that would be a DM determination in each campaign.


Personally, I always liked the idea of it being frictionless (no resistance), so many neat trap opportunities.

OR:

[Handwaving]

You can't get a hold on any [Force] effect. Because it's frictionless. Just 'cause, you know: magic.

[/Handwaving]
 




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