Update 1: Math and stuff · 2:30pm Dec 17th, 2016
Here I will explain some things about my story Unlinked Worlds: what its focus is and some concepts and math behind it.
First off, from a scale of 0 (totally wrecked by Fimfiction staff) to 1 (featured and getting 100+ likes on the first day), I rate my story a .7 (8 likes and 0 dislikes as of now, and 145 views on the first 2 days). I honestly expected my story to be a failure because of the large amount of math included, but apparently you guys like it.
Secondly, chapter 2 currently has 1.7k words. From now on to beginning of January, I’ll have a lot more free time to work on Unlinked Worlds, so expect two more chapters (prob. = .95, .75 resp.) before the end of the year.
Let’s move on to the focus of the story. As a big fan of math, science, and realism in fiction, as well as MLP, I thought of combining the all of those elements together. The result is this. Okay, there might be some problems with realism, but that’s what this story is for. Throughout the story, the ponies will gain a better understanding of the science behind magic, and at the end (if all goes to plan), a “theory” of magic will be presented (with minimal hand-waving).
On my end, I start off with a idea of what magic should be like, and using observations from the show and some “logical” headcanon, I form a model with mathematical equations that describes magic that is used. I then use the equations to come up with the math that is in the story.
For example, the equations that Twilight used in the beginning were derived this way. I first thought of a possible mechanism for teleportation that requires the pony to put in energy for both speed and time used in teleportation. I made the assumption that the energy needed for a teleport of time t is proportional to t^2. One also needs to put in energy for the speed of the movement, or the kinetic energy. By factoring both of those in, there is a combination of speed and time teleported that uses minimum energy for a given distance, and the formula Twilight uses comes directly from that.
Now to some questions:
Spike did some calculations on using a slide rule, but the actual calculation steps are left out. I actually used my own slide rule (yes I have one!) to do the problem, and the numbers I got I put in the story. Would a decent proportion of viewers of this blog post be interested in the detailed calculations?
Question 2: What do you think about the amount of math and science (basically, nerdiness) in the story? Why do you think that? It’s really interesting to see people interested in stuff like this. :D
tl;dr or tc;du (too complicated; didn’t understand):
- There will likely be 2 more chapters before the end of the year.
- I like realism and minimal hand-waving.
- The equations aren’t bs (to some extent).
I love the story so far, reminds me of "The Martian" in the sense of its realism and math/science you put into it. I look forward to more, good job and good luck! :)
4344033 Thanks! I wish there were more stories with a focus on math and science here on the site; I would love to read them.