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robryk comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 19, chapter 88-89 - Less Wrong
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I wouldn't worry about transfiguration sickness: breathing sulphuric acid is probably worse than breathing atomized(?) troll brain matter, and AFAIK sulphuric acid and its salts are either directly harmful or aren't absorbed anywhere interesting in a human.
Now that you've pointed this out, I'm curious: why sulphuric acid? Hydrochloric is simpler.
I doubt that it matters. Sulphuric acid is an oxidizing acid that can do damage through either pH or oxidization while HCl can only ph. Also I think that sulphuric is a more typical acid to ancient alchemists. Furthermore, H2SO4 is a nonvolatile liquid and Harry only produced a small amount of it.
Of course if you are Badass Adult Harry, you just transfigure a spot of Chlorine Trifluoride in the troll and watch it explode.
See this and just about everything else in that blog's "things I won't work with" category, which is hilarious (though there are a few links you might not want to follow if easily upset, notably the one about dimethyl mercury).
Oh, and here's a video of ClF3 encountering various things and doing what it does. Usually with a bright flash, a bang, and some smoke.
Someone's been reading Dungeon Keeper Ami. That molecule is obscure, mostly because of how incredibly impractical it is to make and handle.
Dungeon Keeper Ami? Dude, just read Ignition by John Clark.
I already knew about it when I read DKA's ClF3 chapter.
Of course, if you can transfigure as fast as Quirrel can, you might be best off with a transfigured Iron Man suit.
That notion is absolutely awesome and I hope like hell it makes its way into the fic.
A certain foolishly romantic part of me will not be satisfied unless we get to see the huge fight from the end of Deadly Hallows, only with Chaos Army using a mix of weaponized Charms and flash-Transfiguration of Muggle weapons. Of course that's completely inappropriate for MoR, as HPEJV would, if it came to that, just resort to saturation-bombing with transfigured nukes or whatever. Assuming he couldn't use nanotech or some kind of ID-targeted curse or something else less... hollywood.
I'm curious why he didn't just use incendio
I was thinking it would work as effectively because of the fire weakness thing and Harry shouldn't be magically depleted yet. Also it would be a lot safer than transfiguring sulfuric acid. Although it's possible the troll was enchanted to make it fire resistant and that Harry frankly didn't care whether he was violating the rules of transfiguration, and merely was worried about speed, but I'm inclined to think incendio would be faster.
Or maybe it's not a good idea to cast incendio while the tip of your wand is in a very enclosed location (for instance due to gases that you expect to be released).
Or it's maybe that that the transfiguration requires no wand movements (reference: look at the setup used during the partial transfiguration experiment) as opposed to incendio. It's pretty hard to move your wand in some pattern when it's stuck through a troll's eye socket.
It's not a fire vulnerability. It's just that chemical change stops the regen.
Just because burning cut troll flesh makes it not regen doesn't mean that it will penetrate. They're not highly flammable like Twilight/Luminosity vampires. If I was designing Muggle anti-troll weaponry, I'd be going for something to penetrate into the body and then spread incendiary material. Not a flamethrower. (Although first physically injuring trolls and then dousing them with napalm might work, sort of.
Incendio in the troll's eye would just burn out the eye.
Mana cost in HPMOR seems to affect cooldown more than castability of spells, and transfiguration seems to have no cooldown but (for Harry, Q and other powerful wizards are much faster) is time-consuming.
Harry should be able to near-instantaneously slice-and-dice any transfigurable object by using very thin cutting boundaries, and even cause explosive separation by using compressed inert gas, or even a friction-sensitive explosive (most explosives form fairly nonhazardous materials) Even if the acid failed to prevent the regen, he could have dismembered the troll temporarily and bought time to try something else or to burn it.
ETA: Also, Harry is now able to predict what forms of transfiguration are dangerous, and mild transfiguration sickness is not