Is all ATLA lightning bending considered an outlier?

[Eric_Stormbringer]

Recently I was going through the Avatar character's stats and I noted their speed is only listed as superhuman. However we do have characters reacting to lightning that is calculated at Mach 12 speeds. While I do believe that it would be ridiculous to say ATLA characters have Hypersonic speed should their reaction time not be hypersonic? I understand the concept of outliers but if the same thing has happened repeatedly and we have a verifiable calc why are said feats considered outlier?. TL;DR- What are the standards used to determine outliers and how do they apply to multiple examples?

 

[Gwynbleiddd]

The mach 12 feat was literaly an one time thing, every other lightning (human made) is shown to be slow enough for humans to follow.

Currenlty their speed should be subsonic since iroh was able to react to real life lightning from a good distance.

 

[Eric_Stormbringer]

That would make sense since that bolt of lightning was created during Sozin's comet(x100) firepower. I have not seen any slower calculation. Can you direct me to them(or at least how to find them). Also how does a real lightning bolt reaction count as subsonic speed? Obviously there is a huge range of possible speeds for natural lightning but are we using the slowest possible speed to come to that conclusion?

 

[Gwynbleiddd]

I think i saw the calc on naruto forums but it would take time to find it.

About the reaction speed. Natural lightnig occurs on the clouds so it takes a considerable amount of time to reach the ground. The subsonic feat is iroh raising his hand to catch lightning and change it's direction (book 1 there was a storm and aang was telling his story to katara). The distance iroh's hand would need to travel divided with the time it took the lightning to reach the ground gives subsonic result

 

[Eric_Stormbringer]

Natural Lightning originating at cloud level travels at anywhere from hypersonic- vastly hypersonic speeds. We also have no time frame for Iroh's hand raising speed since ATLA was using "slow time" cinematics for that feat. I tried searching for the calc but cant find it :/.

 

[Gwynbleiddd]

We don't need a time frame:

let's say lightning speed =150000 m/s

cloud height =2000 m

time= distance / speed = 2000 / 150000 =0.013 sec

Distance iroh's hand would have to move = around 1 m

Speed= distance / time =1 / 0.013 = 76.9 m/s (around mach 0.22 or subsonic ,also known as faster than eye)

 

[Eric_Stormbringer]

That certainly does make sense (assuming of course that Iroh saw the lightning originating at cloud level and started moving his hand into position the moment the bolt started). Can anyone else confirm this calc?

 

[Eric_Stormbringer]

I went ahead and plugged in the values for Average lightning and Average thunderstorm cloud height. I got supersonic values:

Using the typical speed of lightning in real life storms since we have no reason for the lightning to be traveling at more than typical speeds or less than typical speeds. Using the altitude for cumulonimbus (thunderstorm) clouds. The average speed of lightning is 6 million m/s. The average cloud base altitude in a thunderstorm is 2000 meters. To find out the amount of time it would take the lightning to get to the boat we simply divide 2000m/6,000,000m/s= .0003 seconds. Now in the video we see Iroh's hands move from below his waist to above his head to intercept the bolt which is approximately 3 feet or one meter. This puts Iroh's reaction time movement at Speed=distance/time= 1m/.0003 seconds. That is 3,333 m/s. The speed of sound is 343 m/s. This puts Iroh's reaction at Mach 10. This is fairly close to Zuko's feat which is a point blank reaction that is calculated at Mach 12.4.

 

[Gwynbleiddd]

Hmmmm, you may be right, i will check the values tommorow because i have to leave now.

 

[ClassicGameGuys]

The mach 12 feat was literaly an one time thing, every other lightning (human made) is shown to be slow enough for humans to follow.

^ This

 

[ClassicGameGuys]

A more thorough calc doesn't even put Iroh's feat at faster than the eye can track

http://www.narutoforums.com/blog.php?b=18110

 

[Gwynbleiddd]

That's exacly the numbers i used ,spooky. faster than eye can track is 34-171 m/s so they are faster than eye

 

[Eric_Stormbringer]

A more thorough calc doesn't even put Iroh's feat at faster than the eye can track
http://www.narutoforums.com/blog.php?b=18110

The only difference in our calcs is the average speed of lightning. A simple google search puts the average bolt of lightning at 3700 miles per second which translates to 5,954,573 meters per second(I rounded to 6million meters per second) not 150,000 meters per second.