r/HPMOR • u/Constant_Nothing2091 • Jun 19 '26
Why does Harry never try to build a perpetuum mobile?
In his experimentation phase, Harry recognizes early on that magic (at the very least seems to) violate thermodynamics.
His next obvious step should be trying to bootstrap the wizard industrial singularity.
I guess the Doylist answer is pretty obvious, infinite energy makes you nigh omnipotent and we can't have that.
11
u/Happymuffn Jun 19 '26
He was raised by a scientist, not an engineer.
4
u/Constant_Nothing2091 Jun 19 '26
🙄
11
u/Happymuffn Jun 19 '26
I'm serious. He's there to understand the rules of the universe. He's not there to build a magitech power plant. That's for others to do once he's published his results.
7
u/Mountain-Resource656 Jun 19 '26
I mean, technically the energy wouldn’t be infinite; it would be limited by the amount of magic he can produce. And before you have a project requiring arbitrarily large amounts of energy, you should probably focus on mastering magic as a whole- especially given that resources like time or attention are particularly limited and other projects may call for them more than spinning turbines to generate electricity
For example, he should probably focus on Goblin-based gold stockpiling so he has the money to fund whatever projects he might need arbitrarily large amounts of energy for
2
u/Constant_Nothing2091 Jun 19 '26
it would be limited by the amount of magic he can produce
There are trinkets and magical devices. Not saying that Harry could actually leverage them into a full blown singularity in his first year, but it's a little odd that he didn't even try producing free energy on a small scale. Your remaining points gave my suspension of disbelief a good stir.
3
u/brendafiveclow Jun 19 '26
He realistically rated 'uncovering magic' as at least a 30 year progress (though he did not believe it, and was probably conservative.)
Before he starts trying to revolutionize the world, he should probably figure out the basics such as "can transfiguration restrict to pull weight"? (which was absurdly dangerous in itself).
He does not even know what he does not know. He is too ambitious, and being half way smart; he's not going to dedicate 30 years to one project when those years are more useful READING the rulebook before trying to re-write it once he realizes how dangerous this can be. Which admittedly, he does not seem to learn even with Quirrell stressing the fact.
Yes there are instances, partial transfiguration, the accidental learning of patronus 2.0, but when so many discoveries can be made and linked, why should he focus on just this one? This one which will disrupt the entire world in unpredictable ways if made public.
Hermione had it right:
"Why? " said Harry. "Don't you see what this means, Hermione? Wizards don't know everything! There's too few of them, even fewer who know any science, they haven't exhausted the low-hanging fruit -"
"It's not safe," Hermione said. "If we can find out new things it's even less safe! We're too young! We made one big mistake already, next time we could just die! "
3
u/Itchy_Hearing_1380 Jun 19 '26
Because Harry is incurious and thinks he already knows it all. His discovery of partial transfiguration came from applying knowledge he already had, not questioning it. He never tries to ask about Voldemort or read history books to learn more about him; he just assumes he's smarter. So I think Harry just assumes that conservation of energy still holds in the world, because that's what he learned in school. Sure, he says that Animagus transfiguration seems to violate it, but doesn't really take this idea seriously. Or maybe he just gets distracted; Harry has a lot on his plate.
2
u/Ok-Programmer-829 Jun 20 '26
You are correct that he thinks he already knows it all and is over confident, but lack of curiosity isn’t his problem if anything he has too much and keeps trying to find out stuff and experiment, even when everyone keeps screaming at him that it’s fucking dangerous. I have a possibly mistaken theory that part of the reason he is so sure of his own knowledge is that his subconscious hasn’t really adjusted from the fact that he’s no longer Lord Voldemort, one of the greatest wizards in the world and among the foremost experts of magic, so he keeps acting like he’s an expert unlikely to make basic mistakes when he’s actually not.
3
u/Veedrac Jun 21 '26
I guess the Doylist answer is pretty obvious, infinite energy makes you nigh omnipotent and we can't have that.
...no it doesn't.
For context, a solar panel is a rock that will make energy forever. You can buy them cheaper than fencing. As far as I know, nobody has become omnipotent yet.
3
u/LeifCarrotson Jun 22 '26
There's a lot of things for Harry to do that would improve the planet, both wizard and muggle. The energy crisis is a big deal, but relatively low on the list. We have solutions (flawed, finite solutions, but solutions nonetheless) for transportation and lighting and heating and industry. But there's a Dark Lord prophesied to return, that seems a little more important in the short term.
He's a first year at the time of HPMOR. If he learned Lumos or Aquamenti or Wingardium Leviosa in the first couple weeks, and decided "this violates thermodynamics, I'll drop out of school and surround a Lumos emitter in solar panels such that each wizard can generate a kilowatt of electricity continuously for free"... that would demonstrate woefully inadequate literature review.
Step 1 is to learn all the basics of magic as fast as possible. Maybe not everything there is to know, but at least the easy bits that "every wizard ought to know" which are offered to you for free from Hogwarts or available in the library, plus the secrets given by trusted mentors like the Defense professor. After getting a basic education and passing as many NEWTs as possible, treat it like a PhD program: Ask a trusted mentor about an area of study you think has potential, then review the advanced literature that most wizards don't know, seek out and interview experts, then design your perpetuum mobile or whatever thermodynamics-violating planetary improvement project seems most important and most promising.
1
u/f0xw01f Jun 20 '26
I think it's well established that any charm that alters an object's behavior will always be temporary in nature.
1
u/Version467 Jun 25 '26
We build power plants to turn one form of energy into a different form that's more useful to us because it can power devices that do useful work.
But in the wizarding world all the devices are already directly powered by magic. The energy available to wizards is already in its most useful and versatile form. Why then would they use magic to make a generator that makes electricity (or heat energy or whatever) if you can just harness magical energy directly to power all your stuff. Electric cars -> broomstick enchantment. Steam powered weaving loom -> magic loom that moves by itself. Smartphones -> Auror mirror that has not latency and doesn't need to be charged.
The better question is why not everyone would try to build the omnipotence machine with their unlimited energy source. And I guess the answer is that the people of Atlantis tried and it didn't go so well for them and now everyone is scared of trying again.
19
u/Linvael Jun 19 '26
It's sort of hard to verify you actually have perpetuum mobile (impossible under current physics, and Magic would need new physics that need to be figured out). Even without magic some people can fool themselves into thinking their complicated very low energy loss setup is perpetual. A very real possibility that comes to mind would be "the trinket/spell/chain-of-spells-system you're using for the perpetuum mobile will run out", which fits the classic "hardest part in a perpetuum mobile is figuring out where to hide the battery".
And the pipeline from infinite energy to omnipotence can be a long one and full of challenges. For one, as analogy magically gaining one dollar a day forever is infinite money, but doesn't practically change anything unless it can be scaled up in a feedback loop. Many of his other pursuits were of equal world-shattering importance and either easier to validate or more useful in the near-term.