[Strange and on topic] Haste . . . and the physics of food?

[Pbartender]

Re: Re: [Strange and on topic] Haste . . . and the physics of food?

No. It wouldn't provide enough energy.
Time for back of envelope calculations:
100 Kg fighter increased in speed from 30 KPH to 60 KpH

Increase from 8 mps to 16 mps. (E= 1/2 mv^2)
12800 joules - 3200 joules= 9600 joules.
This amounts to 2291 calories.

Now this may sound lik a lot. However each calorie will raise one gram of water one degree celsius. Say a decent portion of stew is 250 g (1/2 pount for us merkins). we need to raise it from room temperature to a good eating temperature. So we go from 21 C to 48 C. This process will take 6750 calories.

Cooking is even more energy intensive in general. This was just re-heating. Thus, a basic calculation shows that haste is a no-show energy wise.

buzzard

Besides, there is a vast difference between increasing the velocity of an object as a whole, and increasing the individual speeds of its contituent atoms/molecules to increase its temperature.

 

[Zhure]

"Haste
Transmutation
Level: Brd 3, Sor/Wiz 3
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Close (25 ft. + 5 ft./2 levels)
get: One creature"

Stew isn't a creature.

Greg

 

[Pbartender]

Even if you could cast on a stew, it seems like a waste of a 3rd level spell, don't you think?

 

[I'm A Banana]

Haste doesn't speed particles up, and only affects creatures. One could say it's something like getting injected with a drug...

A Prestidigitation can warm up food. It can also add spices, change the color, make it taste like something else, cool it down, or make it splash on the person eating it.

Usually you don't need a whole host of spells to do daily activities -- prestidigitation fulfills the need nicely.

 

[The Sigil]

Laying aside for a moment "target: Creature" considerations...

Alternatively, take Haste as a spell that "bends" time in your immediate locale... it speeds the relative flow of time in the localized area right around you, making you appear to go faster relative to objects and people nearby. It therefore does nothing to add energy when it speeds things up - it merely introduces a transformation in the time dimension; the speeding up is roughly done at a factor of 1.4:1... perhaps for sake of ease, we could call it a factor of radical 2.

What is the source of the energy that motivates the character? It is not the spell haste that creates energy; the character must still flex muscles, and so forth - it is the character himself that creates the energy, just like he normally does. For him, time around him appears to be slowed down a bit.

Basically, think of haste as a limited exercise in relativity - not by adding energy to the affected character, but rather by "bending" the fabric of space-time around him. No energy is added to the character; rather, for a short period, a "valley" in the time continuum is introduced localized to that character, allowing him to move more quickly along the time axis with the same amount of "effort" (like we spend "effort" moving through time, but work with me here). That is, if you want to try to wrap your head around time being represented as a potential that looks like an infinite plane that is normally on a steep incline relative to anyone passing through it (which explains why you're constantly moving in only one direction) and haste as the means of "deepening" the incline a bit by putting a valley in the potential plane, thus allowing for quicker descent and speeding up your journey along the plane. Have I lost everyone yet?

Thus, casting Haste on food does nothing to heat it; rather, it just speeds the process of spoilage, as the food thinks 1.4 minutes pass for every 1 minute someone not under the influence of the spell thinks pass. So if food normally spoils in 15 minutes, if you haste it, it'll spoil in just over 10.

--The Sigil

 

[Pbartender]

In other words, Sigil, from one point of view Haste is just a mild-mannered Time Stop.

I like that.

 

[Zappo]

Cool, but there is no need for that. Making a creature go faster and making its molecules go faster are two completely different tasks, and assuming that a spell that does one can't do the other is perfectly reasonable.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Re: Re: [Strange and on topic] Haste . . . and the physics of food?

Second (and here we get into the bit about not useing real-world science to explain D&D magic), if the spell would cook the meat in the stew, it would also cook the meat on the bones of a recipient of a more conventional casting of the spell. In other words, people who had Haste cast on them would take damage. Since they do not take damage, that means Haste doesn't heat things up.

Hey, now... I like that nerf better than the 3.5 one!

"I cast Haste on the Barbarian."
"The room gradually begins to smell of roasting pork..."

-Hyp.

 

[Conaill]

I would allow it... providing he takes heat damage when he casts Haste on himself too!