Science question for the brainy among us

[Keith]

I think the container will deform; it might be elastic enough to stretch and contain the water (it is lead, pewter, some such). It seems more likely that it will crack at some point. The water will then burst out at that point, propelling the object in the opposite direction if it is not restrained. I don’t think there is much chance of an explosive reaction.
At the same time, the ice idea is intriguing, but I’m assuming there would not be enough tensile strength in the container to do that.
I’m guessing on all that, though.

 

[~Joseph~]

The instant the magic is dispelled I would assume that the water would try to return to it's original volume. Really we don't know because you can't compress water to find out how it would react. If we assume it will expand back to it's original volume, then the ball will burst. In anything there will be one point that has a weakness that will be the point at which it bursts.

 

[Aaron L]

Or make the ball out of magically hardened adamantine, so that it cant be broken, and you have a quasi magical heat generator that never runs out! (I know it's not gonna work that way, but neato magic/sience item) Kinda like protoculture.

 

[F5]

It would explode. That's what explosions are; some material rapidly expanding. In order for the "shrunken" water to expand inside the confined sphere, there would have to be sufficient energy to burst the sphere. Otherwise the water doesn't expand. Really, I can't think of any examples in real-world physics where a substance instantly springs into existence inside a volume that would be too small for it. So, you have to go with some "it's magic, it just works that way" conjecture.

Assume the water was compressed to an extreme degree, so that the larger volume of water was made to fit inside the smaller sphere. The water mollecules would get packed together in a super-solid state. Maybe if you re-grow shrunken water inside an unbreakable metal shpere, it gets packed into some kind of super-ice, harder than diamond, and unnaturally heavy. Water elemental lords go into battle wearing suits of super-ice chain mail, and weilding super-ice-tipped tridents.

Or, you go back to the shrinking process in the first place. Where does the mass of the shrunken water go? Perhaps the excess mass is shunted off into an extradimensional space for the duration of the spell. Trying to restore the waters' original mass inside an unbreakable sphere is impossible, like teleporting into a solid object. So, all the water is shunted back into the extradimensional space instead, leaving a metal sphere filled with nothing but vacuum. What you do with that, I dunno.

It's impossible to really apply scientific principles to D&D magic, and it rarely results in any useful conclusions, but golly it can be fun...

 

[Aaron L]

I like the superdense diamondice idea.

 

[DanMcS]

Now that I think about it more, there might not be that much of an explosion. When you shrink something, it doesn't happen instantly, right? It happens very fast, but it happens in time. Same for the growth when shrink ends.

So the water will start to expand very fast. Steel deforms when pressures are measured in megaPascals, or roughly tens or hundreds of atmospheres. The water wouldn't have to expand very much to reach that point, so long before it expanded to full size the sphere would have failed. The water would continue expanding as the steel deformed and split. The sphere would fail at a single point initially (they always do), and that point would become like the exhaust nozzle on a rocket as this little steel death ball winged around bouncing off or shooting through things.

If, on the other hand, you think shrink and growth happen instantly, or say the shrunken water ball was brought into an anti-magic field, then yes, explosion. Big one.

 

[Wicht]

Maybe if you re-grow shrunken water inside an unbreakable metal shpere, it gets packed into some kind of super-ice, harder than diamond, and unnaturally heavy. Water elemental lords go into battle wearing suits of super-ice chain mail, and weilding super-ice-tipped tridents.

I like this idea!

Except using a sphere would be impractical. Some sort of magically reinforced mold would be more the thing. And assuming that the process of shrinking water was not too high magic, a simple water shrinking spell and a single mold could turn out hundreds of suits of ice armor a day!

 

[BVB]

... go back to the shrinking process in the first place. Where does the mass of the shrunken water go? Perhaps the excess mass is shunted off into an extradimensional space for the duration of the spell. Trying to restore the waters' original mass inside an unbreakable sphere is impossible...

I considered that, too. Once we nullify the magic that allowed the "shrinking" to take effect, the water has to react within certain rules that we can only guess at. For all we know, the displaced/condensed/shrunk water volume would explode into some other plane ... which might be seen as an act of war by the natives there.

Magic-science experiments just for the heck of it. Dangerous potential. But how else will we move the art forward unless we explore the unknowable?

 

[F5]

Magic-science experiments just for the heck of it. Dangerous potential. But how else will we move the art forward unless we explore the unknowable?

Too true, BVB. Too true. Unbreakable ice and extraplanar water-bombs are just the beginning! Much fun is to be had by contemplating impossible ways to blow stuff up!

 

[der_kluge]

Not being much of a scientist, I can only speculate, but here's my two cents worth:

Anything can be compressed (dark matter, anyone?) So you could conceivably have a 1 inch diameter sphere with a gallon's worth of water in it.

Releasing the magical hold on the water would expand the sphere out, and break it, but then you get into the tensile strength of the sphere, but I would imagine that it'd have to be pretty strong not to break from that kind of pressure. The sphere would break and the pieces would fly, the water would escape, but I don't think it'd be all the powerful. Essentially, the pieces of the sphere would fly in random directions like projectiles, and the water would just expand out, and fall on the floor.