No Conservation of Energy: Difference between revisions
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* Parodied in ''[[Galaxy Quest]]'', when the crew has to land on a hostile planet to retrieve a "Beryllium Sphere", because it supposedly powers the ship, for reasons completely unexplained and unknown, except that it happened on the TV show.
** This is a direct parody of the Dilithium Crystal that somehow makes warp drive possible in ''[[Star Trek]]''. It is there to "mediate" the matter-[[Antimatter]] reaction and create a pair of tuned plasma streamers. This is only explained that way in official material ''outside'' of the show, which makes this [[All There in the Manual]].
** In the [[Star Trek (film)|2009 Star Trek movie]], Spock uses a drop of "red matter" to collapse a supernova into a [[Negative Space Wedgie]] via some sort of chemical reaction. The wedgie seems to work like a [[Unrealistic Black Hole|Hollywood black hole]], sucking up the entire
* In ''[[Honey I Shrunk the Kids]],'' the principle behind the shrink ray is explained thus: atoms and molecules are made up largely of empty space between the subatomic particles.<ref>This is true; the distance from the nucleus of an atom to its electron cloud is on par with the distance from the Sun to Pluto, relative to its size</ref> The ray shrinks an object by reducing this empty space. However, this should mean that a shrunk object retains its mass. Ergo, the shrunk children should be just as heavy and ''just as strong'' as they were at full-size. There should be no plot, because there's no way they could get swept up in the garbage by accident, and they should have the strength to jump up and activate the machine themselves - assuming their incredible density didn't make them fall straight through the floor.
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* Averted in [[Anne McCaffrey]]'s [[Tower and The Hive|Talent series]], which explains that the power necessary for the telekinetics to hurl spaceships around like toys comes from ''massive'' generators. Psychic activity (with or without a generator gestalt) also burns ''a lot'' of calories, meaning that, while a telekinetic with no generator handy can get the job done quicker, he's still doing the same amount of work as someone doing it by hand. Many of the telekinetics are shown eating some pretty high-calorie meals and snacks throughout the day to keep their strength up, and get extremely fatigued after teleporting very large objects (even with the generators helping).
** Also, it's stated that energy must be '''absorbed''' when negative work is done (for instance, teleporting an object from orbit down to ground level), although simply being the conduit for such large amounts of energy can still place enormous stress on physical systems.
** Also averted in ''[[The Ship Who]] Won''. A brainship finds a world where magic actually works, complete with all the standard
* Averted in Robert Asprin's ''[[Myth Adventures]]'' book series: magic is fueled by [[Ley Line|ley lines]] crisscrossing the worlds, and you have to be tapped into those forces to be an effectively powerful wizard.
* It's often hard to reconcile stories that involve [[Shapeshifting]] with the related law of conservation of mass. In one of his ''[[Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser]]'' books [[Fritz Leiber]] makes an exception by having a character who's shrunk needing to find a few zillion spare atoms if he wants to get back to normal size. {{spoiler|In the end he gets them from a fat girl, who suddenly finds herself skinny. Eww.}}
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* [[Dan Brown]]'s ''[[Angels & Demons]]'' is based around the female protagonist/her dead father pumping vast quantities of energy into the LHC to form [[Antimatter]], which they can then annihilate with normal matter to provide 'clean, sustainable energy for all' (instead of the bomb it inevitably becomes). It somehow never occurs to either of these highly trained scientists that they would have to put more in energy to create the antimatter than they could ever get out. The second law of thermodynamics wins again.
** [[Antimatter]] is pretty much impossible to contain in real life. You'd be hard pressed to find a less portable energy source.
* Lampshaded in ''[[Firestarter]]''. After a government experiment in which Charlie McGee vaporizes a cinderblock wall with her pyrokinetic powers, the next chapter is an Interdepartmental Memo in which one of the evil government scientists points out to the head evil government scientist that, despite producing 30,000 degrees of spot heat, the nine-year-old girl in question burned about as many calories as if she were reading a good
* [[Alan Dean Foster]]'s ''[[Humanx Commonwealth]]'' series has a brain-bending use of this trope in its mechanism for [[FTL Travel]], which involves generating a small black hole in front of your ship and letting it "pull" you along until it evaporates, at which point you generate a new black hole, and so on. The first novel in which it's introduced even [[Lampshades]] it by having the viewpoint character struggle with the concept.
* Moorcock's series ''The Dancers At The End Of Time'' averts it: one million years in the future the advanced technology of mankind has turned the remaining members of our species into undying [[Reality Warper|Reality Warping]] [[Physical God
* Averted in regards to conservation of mass in the ''[[Deverry]]'' novels. The mazrakir (shapeshifters) all change into an animal form the same size as their normal form. Nevyn pokes fun at the old 'sorcerers turning people into frogs' story by pointing out the stories never mention that the frogs would have to be big enough to ride.
* Averted in Eric Nylund's ''A Signal Shattered'' where an alien merchant sells the people of Earth a teleportation device which works by borrowing a negligible amount of the Earth's rotation. Needless to say, widespread use of this "free" technology results in Earth's destruction. {{spoiler|Which was all part of the alien's plan, of course.}}
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** It gets even worse with the above example. Two logistics ships can transfer 324 GJ of energy every few seconds to each other while only using 108 GJ each to do it. This results in each ship gaining 216 GJ of energy every 5 seconds that literally comes from nowhere.
*** Another example would be the "Thermodynamics" skill description: "Also gives you the ability to frown in annoyance whenever you hear someone mention a perpetual motion unit."
* The ''[[Portal (series)|Portal]]'' games play merry hob with physics. Consider the things you could accomplish with a zero-energy link between two discrete surfaces in
* Averted in [[Dragon Age]], mages are lucid dreamers with the ability to draw some element of the Fade into the real world to make it respond to their will. And in most cases they still have to use [[Green Rocks|lyrium]] as a power source.
* In ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'' smelting, forging metal items, and other things that require great heat can get the heat from magma rather than by burning fuel. But since in the game magma remains at the same fixed temperature regardless of how much heat has been extracted from it, a small bit of magma isolated from the planet's core can supply an endless amount of heat energy.
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== Web Comics ==
* Averted precisely once in ''[[The Adventures of Dr. McNinja]]'', [http://drmcninja.com/archives/comic/17p82 here].
* ''[[El Goonish Shive]]'' initially averted this with Grace, your average teenage everyday shapeshifter, who initially had a constant mass (and presumably variable density), no matter what form ([[Fridge Logic|even squirrel?]]). Then, once the TF gun is used on her, she's surprised to discover that her mass now does change with her form. This is apparently possible because both the TF gun and her shapeshifting powers use a type of energy that can be classified as magic. In addition, the magic users burn up Ki energy, which they constantly recharge, and can burn caloric energy instead, or use the Ki energy as a boost for things that normally use caloric energy. Still a little odd, especially considering where the Ki energy comes from, how immortals fit in, etc., but [[Magic A Is Magic A|explained well enough for this trope to be largely averted]]
* How can anybody ignore [[Order of the Stick]], the comic the quote above comes from? Definitely ignorable, as magic is a big part of the comic, but it is still [[Lampshaded]], as are other laws of physics.
* ''[[The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob]]'' acknowledges this, even if it is handled in a very toony fashion. Snookums started as a giant [[Kaiju]] and got compressed to the size of a basketball; he's shown to still be enormously heavy, but still not nearly as heavy as his original size would indicate.
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== Web Original ==
* The [[Whateley Universe]] makes a few attempts to [[Hand Wave]] this, comic book style. For example, magic users need a suitable power source (Fey draws upon ley lines for this purpose and has trouble when those get disrupted badly enough) or else have to cast their spells from their limited personal supply of 'essence'. Energizers tend to be [[Big Eater|big eaters]], although it's implied that the real source of their power may be outside
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* In ''[[Futurama]]'', Professor Farnsworth describes his ship's engines as having ''200%'' efficiency and they used not to move the ship, but to move the entire universe around the ship. Another character comments that this is "''especially'' impossible."
** Made doubly hilarious by the fact that the writing team have a few physics degrees among them.
* In ''[[Justice League]]'' Batman invokes the law of conservation of energy (well, he exchanges 'energy' with 'mass', but otherwise...) as an indication that {{spoiler|a [[Disintegrator Ray]] believed to have vaporized Superman}} didn't work the way its creator
* ''[[Batman: The Brave And The Bold|Batman the Brave And The Bold]]'', of course, usually plays this dead straight. Still, there was a notable aversion in "OMAC Attacks!": Batman wonders how the villain keeps regrowing his weapons without losing mass elsewhere; it turns out he was absorbing the kinetic force of the [[Dumb Muscle]]'s attacks against him.
** An attempted aversion, anyway, since the [[Dumb Muscle]] would have to convert his ''own'' mass into energy to hit with that kind of force. Otherwise he's literally punching energy out of nothing, which is, admittedly, pretty badass.
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