Bionicle Elements Discussion

LEGO BIONICLE
106

He’s the Toa of Earth. That means knowing when there’s a gigantic rock in your way before you get to it.

Is it directly stated that he can do this? No, but it wasn’t directly stated he could make mud explode. Until he did, in '08.[quote=“SirKeksalot, post:22, topic:51496”]
Second, in “Divided We Fall,” the Toa Nuva spar with one another, and Onua creates a ramp to send Pohatu flying. If it were sediment of any kind, Pohatu would hurdle through it, but his speed sends him up the ramp as though it were something solid and sturdy.
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Two things to consider.

One, the sediment is as compacted or as loose as Onua wants it to be. Sure, he could make it normal soil and Pohatu could blast into it for funsies. But he’s the Toa of Earth. He doesn’t just move earth, he controls it. Commands it. Just like how Helryx was able to weaponize water and threaten Takanuva (also '08) Onua gets to tell his element what to do.

Two, the comics are cool as canon, but we can’t take the visual depiction of things as canon. Otherwise Kopaka’s head is incredibly tiny, Onua has dwarfism, and Lewa has eyes in the top of his head.

And finally, if you do consider the visual depictions as canon, you can see roots trapped with the mystery material Onua is commanding - roots wouldn’t be trapped in stone.

The mystery material also matches the depiction of the ground Onua is standing on. Unless he’s standing on a massive chunk of rock buried in the ground, I’d say it’s dirt.

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107

This isn’t about gigantic rocks. In order to dig through the stuff Onu-Koro is built inside, Onua has to burrow through strata–that’s layers of rock. The soil layer only goes so deep. And when he brings the house down on the Rahkshi, he’s bringing down the cave ceiling. Caves are made entirely of rock. How is he doing this if he can’t control rock?

None of that changes the structural integrity of the material he’s controlling. Sediment is usually soft, especially in places where you’ll get a forest, which is what the Toa are fighting in in that scene. Also, Toa are bigger than most humans, and almost certainly weigh more. Factor in the immense speed Pohatu’s travelling at, and however he may try, he’d almost certainly sink into a giant ramp made of soil.

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108

Never mind an earth ramp holding Pohatu. In Voyage of Fear, an earth ramp from Whenua lifts a whole Vahki transport, with four Toa Metru and six Matoran canisters.

This isn’t planet Earth. It’s an artificial island made by a giant robot face.

He brings down a part of it on the Rahkshi. The rest falls as an unintended consequence of him collapsing that section. It’s plausible the ceiling was rock mixed with dirt, and so he was able to bring it down. He wasn’t able to stop the cave collapse, though, because those were rocks.

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109

Mask of Light’s IMDB page has a trivia point that says that Lego designers said that the Toa would be 6.6-7 feet tall, whereas Makuta would be 20 feet tall. Obviously, this is hardly a viable way to gouge someone’s weight. I’ve met six-foot-tall people that weigh less than 200 pounds, and I’ve met six-foot-tall people who weigh more than that. You could say that people lose weight through excessive exercise, but I dunno about that. One time I went on a Boy Scout trip where I rode my bike all the way across the state. It took a week, and with all that exercising, I thought I’d lose weight. But in reality, I gained weight in muscle. And since the Toa are always up and about, running around and fighting bad guys, surely they’ve got some muscle built up. Not to mention, a contributing factor in their weight would be what they’re actually made of. We know they have brains, hearts, and muscles, but there’s also armor and metal framework. That’s gotta add some payload.

With all that, I’m gonna estimate that a Toa’s weight is around 300 pounds, or 136 kilograms. If you placed that amount of weight onto a mound of dirt, then yes, it would collapse the dirt. But again: velocity plays a big part. A 300-pound humanoid would surely collapse dirt if he tried to run across it at a normal pace. However, Pohatu wears the Mask of Speed. And, since…

…then that means he can solidify earth to his wishes. He could very well get the earth/soil to hold up under Pohatu’s weight. Or, alternatively, he could’ve summoned even more soil to add to the support.

Okay, this is gonna be an even wilder estimate. Four Toa Metru would add up to 1,200 pounds. Six Matoran canisters? Since they had the Matoran inside, then they might be roughly 250 pounds (ish?). Six of them would be 1,500 pounds. And the Vahki transport…how about I just say it weighs five tons? In other words, 10,000 pounds? All this adds up to…

12,700 pounds. Ouch.

Yeah, maybe we should suspend our disbelief for this one…

110

Yeah, but unless we assume it follows the same rules as Earth, then we have no point of reference whatsoever for how the world works.

If the ceiling is partly made of soil, wouldn’t it, y’know…not be able to support itself to begin with? Caves stay intact because they’re made of rock.

…which only increases the force applied to the ramp when he hits it. F = ma; the faster he’s running, the greater the force of impact. He was running fast enough to create a miniature vortex around Lewa. Do you have any idea how fast he’d have to be going to do that?

By that reasoning, Gali can do the same to prevent stuff from passing through her own element; just make it exert enough force on whatever’s pushing on it, and it can’t go through, at least not very far. And, again, think of just how much force Pohatu’s exerting on that ramp once he takes even his first step onto it–Onua needs to push insanely hard to stop him there. This process becomes easier if the ramp is made primarily of rock. And you can even see him kicking up a lot of debris in that panel,

And while I’m here, I should say I forgot to address the apparent roots in the ramp–there are instances of tree roots pushing through rock to get to soil. They go around when possible, but in the case of such plants as the ponderosa pine, you’ll find them lodged in cliff faces. And the ramp even looks like it’s made up of rocks.

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111

Greg has pretty much confirmed in the past that it doesn’t follow the same rules as Earth. I forget what question what asked or when, but his answer was more less that the world of Bionicle does not operate on the same rules as our world does

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112

You’re forgetting one crucial detail: Pohatu is in motion when he’s running up the ramp.

Let’s say someone is skipping across a series of stepping stones in a river, and the stones fall over as they’re doing so. Do you know why the person doesn’t fall with the stones? Because they don’t stay on the stones long enough to fall. They ■■■■■ their weight onto the stone for just a second or two, long enough for them to hop onto the next stone.

Again: Pohatu is running up the ramp. He is in MOTION. Sure, the dirt would collapse in his wake, but by the time it does, he’d already have moved on.

Uh…yeah.

113

The rocks don’t collapse, either. They’re solid and rigid, allowing them to return the force you apply to them. If you did the same with piles of dirt, however, you’d just sink into them because they’re soft.

That’s not how running on stuff works. On a surface that normally gives way when force is applied, you need special adaptations in order to quickly run across it; in order to run at all, the surface has to return the force applied by your foot, which only works if the surface is solid or if you’ve got the tools necessary to run across it. If Pohatu had really wide feet, he might be able to run across such a surface, sorta like a basilisk, but he doesn’t–and, as you yourself established, Toa probably have a really high mass, so he’d need VERY big feet.

You also need to consider that Pohatu runs up the ramp. Even if he did have feet that could avoid sinking into the dirt, I’m not so sure the ramp could support him at the top at that angle, especially seeing as it gets really narrow at the top.

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114

Perhaps it’s not so much that he runs up a ramp, more that the ground he’s running on is turned into a ramp as he’s running on it.

115

That wouldn’t change how he applies the force to the material; if anything, it increases the force applied because the ground is moving as he steps on it.

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116

You can make a pile of dirt solid by compacting it, just like a snowball: the more you compact it the harder it is.
If Onua with his powers not only made a ramp of dirt but compacted it it would indeed be strong enogh to let Pohatu run over it without passing straight through.

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117

He’d have to compress it a lot to make it rock-solid, though. In fact, he’d need to apply the same amount of force with his powers to a lot of dirt at once to effectively make it all into a sedimentary rock on the spot. We’ve seen him manipulate more material at once, as he does in one of the ‘08 comics where he makes a bleedin’ tsunami of mud; but how much force can he exert on that stuff with his powers? That’s kind of up in the air, unfortunately.

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118

I guess Toa are just that powerful. Even so, who said the earth has to be as solid as a rock? Support isn’t always achieved by strength; it’s also achieved by the amount of stuff. For instance, when we’re on the beach, why do we not sink through the sand and eventually hit the harder layers of the crust below? Because there’s so much sand on the beach, and so much of it is compacted, it all manages to support our weight. When Onua sent Pohatu flying, he just had to create a ramp comprised of just the right amount of dirt compacted together to support a Toa’s weight for a few seconds.

119

This is totally irrelevant when we can see the size of the ramp in the comic. The dirt on the Earth’s crust supports us because of how much there is and because it’s on top of a layer of rock; that ramp is nowhere near as thick as the soil layer on our planet, and it doesn’t have rock supporting it at all angles that Pohatu would hit it at.

But that’s not what it needs to do. Pohatu’s not standing on it for a few seconds; if he were, it may very well be able to support even a Toa as thicc as he is. The trouble is that he’s hitting it at speeds fast enough for him to create a cyclone by running around. That’s the entire reason he loses control and flies off. Again: F=ma; the faster the rate at which you apply the force, the greater the force. The force only increases relative to the surface applied when it’s applied over a smaller surface area, and Pohatu’s only gonna hit the ramp with one foot at a time.

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120

By this logic, then Pohatu should leave big footprints in the ground every time he uses the Mask of Speed-at least, provided that the ground is made of something soft like grass, snow, or dirt.

Seriously, though. The thing to keep in mind is that the ramp is not a natural occurrence-it’s a product of Onua’s elemental powers. Those are anything but natural. As I interpret the comic, Onua caused the ground to rise while Pohatu was running, hence why he said “Uh-oh.” I don’t care what kind of rules you try to apply: by all scientific laws, there is no way Pohatu can be running at a fast speed and bring himself to a halt just like that. This is what Onua was playing off of.

However, like you said, Onua still runs into the problem of kinetic energy-the energy that you possess while you’re in motion. Even simple things like reaching for a cup of hot chocolate involve kinetic energy. As a general rule, the faster something is moving, the more kinetic energy it possesses. So when it strikes another object, it transfers that kinetic energy. And the object that’s being hit had better hope it’s strong enough to withstand that energy-lest it get broken or knocked over, or both.

Onua’s possible compensation? Forcing the soil to resist Pohatu’s kinetic energy. It wouldn’t involve pushing against him or anything like that. For one thing, you can’t fight kinetic energy by pushing against it, and for another, if Pohatu’s feet were hit by a force equal to or greater than what they were exerting, then let’s just say Pohatu might no longer have feet! No, Onua’s solution would be to magically strengthen the soil’s compaction (is that a word?). He’d just have to will the soil to be strong enough to withstand Pohatu’s footsteps, and his powers would do the rest. Admittedly, this theory isn’t very scientific. But Bionicle was always about fantasy mixed with sci-fi.

The only other idea I could come up with was for Onua to will the dirt to come back together immediately after it crumbled under Pohatu’s footsteps. As amusing as a mental image as that is, it still wouldn’t let Pohatu run up the ramp.

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Which is a separate issue.

That doesn’t mean it’s suddenly made of different stuff.

I mean, he has a magic mask that lets him hit those speeds to begin with. The Kakama likely has “brakes;” it’d have to, otherwise you’d kill yourself whenever you tried to use it.

You’re assuming Onua has the kind of power that makes any solid element virtually indestructible against most opponents. You’re also assuming Onua has the power to change the physical properties of the element he uses, which defeats the entire purpose of having different elemental powers to begin with.

That’s not how physics works. Whenever you apply a force to an object, it applies an equal force in the opposite direction.

2 problems with this. First, he’d need to manipulate a lot of soil at once in order to compact it into a ramp of that volume. Second, he’d need to do it instantly, and it’d take the same amount of pressure needed to make sediment into sedimentary rock. It’s the kind of power we never see a Toa of Earth really use, nor do we see it mentioned or discussed, which is weird when you consider how powerful it really is. In fact, that’s mean Onua can change his native element into Stone, and we never hear about Toa changing their element into another. If this is the one time Onua does this, that just raises more questions.

122

I am not assuming any of that. I am assuming that Onua can bring together a bunch of soil-enough to hold for a short amount of time against Pohatu running. Again: Pohatu can’t have been running on that ramp for longer than five seconds.

My point exactly. If the soil were pushing really hard against Pohatu, not only would it hurt Pohatu, it would also end up damaging itself.

Who says that he’s not compacting enough soil? The panels of that comic do not show a full view of the ramp. They only show the ramp starting to rise, and the tip of the ramp when Pohatu goes flying. So for all we know, Onua could’ve been manipulating a LOT of soil. Not just the ramp itself-the soil layers underneath the ramp. Like you said…

And on the island of Mata Nui, there’s tons of dirt on top of a layer made of a substance much thicker than rock: Mata Nui’s face. But that’s getting off topic. My main point is, we might be underestimating just how much soil Onua was manipulating.

I mean, the whole point of the Toa Nuva is that their powers were amplified…

123

But that assumption is necessary to make this one action possible. The force of impact of Pohatu on the ramp is the thing here; he hits the ramp and the ramp needs to withstand it. Doesn’t matter how long he runs on it, only how hard he hits it; if a meteorite lands in the Gulf of Mexico, it only makes landfall once, but the force applied to the Earth decides whether or not it wipes out the dinosaurs.

That…that’s my entire thesis. Pohatu runs on the ramp. He MUST apply a force to it to do so. If it’s any kind of soft material, it SHOULD collapse because it can’t return that force without disintegrating.

They don’t become literal gods who can move whole mountains in an instant with no effort, though. If they were that powerful, Onua could just summon some dirt over the Rahkshi and instantly destroy them, or at least their robot suits, 'cuz of the Toa Code. But no, the Toa could only defeat them together, so where’s all that power when Onua needs it most?

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Correct! The ramp just needs to be able to withstand that force.

I didn’t say they were gods; only that they were more powerful than before. And like Ghid and I have said, the earth is whatever Onua wants/needs it to be. If he wants Pohatu to collapse into a pile of dirt, then that’s what it is. If he wants the dirt to compact itself together enough to support Pohatu’s weight/force of running, then that’s what it does. All throughout this debate, I have tried to avoid using the word “magic,” since this is a scientific discussion, but one word: last resort.

125

I didn’t say you were, I was making a point.

And, as I have already said, this not only defeats the point of having different elements, but would require immense concentration and effort on Onua’s part. He has to either keep the dirt right under each of Pohatu’s footsteps pushing back on him as he runs across it or he needs to pull the entire mass towards him and keep it perfectly uniform such that it acts as a single, coherent solid down to every last crumb of dirt. Unless I’m forgetting something, no other Toa exerts that kind of meticulous control over their element at any other point in Bionicle.

It’s really not. F=ma isn’t scientific, it’s a fact of life. Grass grows, birds fly, sun shines, I hurt people–these are just constants you can go out and experience for yourself. You’re experiencing F=ma right now. We know this because of science, but the existence of this physical property isn’t scientific in the least.

Furthermore, we’re talking about a magic system. Elemental powers are never explained with any sort of justification that draws on real-world physics, so it’s just magic; namely, a sort of midway between soft and hard magic, where there are some clear rules (only Toa of X element can use that element), but it’s not nearly as detailed as other systems. We should absolutely be using the word magic.