Question about incandescence

[gibberingmouther]

I finally registered the copyright (or started the process) for my game manual and then I published it on my web site. 239 pages then for the first edition and I've added a few since. I'm not trying to advertise here and it's not a commercial thing anyway (there is no link to my website on my profile, but if you're curious you could pm me). So thanks to help I got here I was able to develop some good ideas - details for how altered time rate works, for example, and how a plasma projectile might work.

So, energy attacks in my game are made of magical particles. Other forms of magic might also use magic particles - like an ice attack that has massless particles that to varying degrees "absorb" heat and reduce the kinetic energy of atoms and molecules around them.

My question pertains to two types of magic. One is an energy blast - a ki blast - and the other is a fireball spell. The "burning ki" blast is fused with air condensed by telekinesis. The ordinary ki used for telekinesis agitates the condensed air so it becomes hot. When the burning ki detonates the blast, all the air is sent with a ton of energy radially outward. So, this aspect is like a pressure explosion plus air that may transmit conductive heat through kinetic energy of air particles.

Everyone's ki particles emit a different color of light. My idea here was that when the ki particles agitate the air, they do it to such a degree that the now vibrating atoms or molecules emit radiant energy including the same color photons as the ki itself - or close to the same color, anyway. Does this make sense? Would the molecules and atoms in air be able to all vibrate so they release the same color photons? And could these vibrating atoms and molecules in the air also emit very intense hot radiant energy?

Alternatively, the burning ki itself releases photons of the "right" color (cool looking powers are important), so it would work if the vibrating air particles don't have much incandescence, but the "burning" aspect of the ki blast explosion isn't going to be very impressive without a lot of radiant energy being emitted by the vibrating air particles.

My question as it pertains to a magical fireball is really just me asking again to make sure - would vibrating air particles agitated by magic release light? If not, I could just make it so the magic that agitated the air for the fireball emits photons. For this, either way works fine but I want to understand how it works if possible. If there's no radiant energy the fireball isn't going to be as effective, but the magic could make it so the air particles temporarily emit "temporary" radiant energy particles that disappear after they do their damage. (Temporary because creating new matter in this game verse is not easy to do with magic.)

 

[jfizzix]

Hypothetically... I see at least three options.

If the telekinesis is simply heating up the atoms in a gas to a high temperature, it will glow according to the blackbody radiation spectrum (more or less). In that case, it'll just look like a fireball, or possibly a blue-white fireball if it's tens of thousands of degrees hot.

Alternatively, it is possible to get air to act like the gain medium of a laser. (see, e.g.,

The problem with making the color of a blast a laser-like phenomenon is that the frequencies emitted are due to the materials being manipulated, and not so much who is doing the manipulation or how.

Alternatively, if the telekinesis can rip the electrons out of the atoms giving you a plasma, and you can move these charges independently in cycles of a given frequency, the radiation emitted (e.g., by cyclotron radiation due to the charges' accelerations) will have a main frequency equal to the frequency they are being shaken at. However, for visible light, this frequency would be hundreds of trillions of cycles per second, so imagining a hero visualizing the oscillation in their mind seems unlikely. Perhaps it could be something random and unique to an individual, like a spectral fingerprint of their blast?

 

[gibberingmouther]

Thank you jfizzix. So, that works fine for magic fireballs. I didn't know about the blackbody thing - heard of it, but I've never covered thermodynamics in a physics course yet. Which reminds me, as much as I would like to work on my game manual I have a test in E&M tomorrow! I didn't do great on the second test so I need to do well on this one.

Regular fireball color is fine - as the power level increases, fighters will be able to use their telekinesis to make their blasts hotter. There's probably a limit to how condensed you can make the air while still heating it, but the ki blasts themselves can get "hotter" without a limit I know of.

The ki blast part of the fused blast emits brighter light the higher the power level, so some of that color will come through along with the blackbody radiation of the blast before it detonates. After it detonates, I guess it will just look like a normal fireball with the color depending on how hot it is.