Hogwarts: From Selling White Peppers to Becoming a God

Chapter 205 Everything is a Wave

A few days later, during a lunch, Harry Potter received a Nimbus 2000, making the other first-year students so envious they almost split apart.

Thus, Gryffindor had its youngest Seeker in a century.

Due to the pressure of Quidditch training, he and Ron had fewer opportunities to get close to Hagrid. With some free time, Ron joined Murphy's research group in order to get a new wand.

However, Ron's math skills were far inferior to Hermione's and Tom's, and he could only do the simplest jobs: being a tester.

Ron was actually quite enjoying it. After all, testers only needed to follow orders, which was much better than Hermione and Tom having to spend all day studying Muggle math books on statistics and physics.

Moreover, Murphy promised him that once the research was finished, she would give him a new wand for free.

The four of them had a very fulfilling month ahead.

In addition to his regular schoolwork, Harry also had Quidditch training, and Ron also needed to be Murphy's tester every day after school or on Saturdays and Sundays, using spells countless times a day. As a result, Ron's spell level improved rapidly, making him the fastest-improving student in Charms class besides Hermione and Tom.

Hermione and Tom, needless to say, had to juggle their studies, wand tests, math, and group projects—about ghosts and Legilimency—while secretly fascinated by the secrets behind the trapdoor.

Tom even wants to investigate his own background.

Murphy sometimes felt exhausted just watching them.

I never put in this much effort when I was in school.

This year's students are under a really heavy burden.

But Murphy showed no intention of easing their burden.

Who told you to be geniuses?

If you're a genius, you have to work harder than others, otherwise, wouldn't such great talent be wasted?

By mid-October, Murphy had essentially completed the construction of the wand's principle.

He convened the ninth group meeting.

"Over the past month, we've clarified quite a few things through various experiments."

"First, we verified that a wand is a magic amplifier by using magic tests with and without a wand. But at this point, we still don't know how this amplifier works."

"Secondly, through testing the magic power around the wizard, we discovered the fluidity of magic power. That is, in a static state, magic power will naturally dissipate, but when needed, magic power will concentrate according to the wizard's will."

"When a spell is cast, magic gathers from all parts of the wizard's body into his arm, and then is released through the wand."

"Third, following the flow of magic, we found the first mechanism by which the wand acts as an amplifier: we verified the magic tip hypothesis."

"Miss Granger, through her observations of magical creatures, suggested that most magical creatures release magic from a pointed part of their body. For example, horned creatures usually use their horns to release magic. The pointed part of the magic helps to concentrate the magic, increase the concentration and intensity of the released magic, and allow it to break through its original limits, thus enhancing the effect of the magic."

"A wand is a man-made tip of magic."

"It can concentrate a wizard's magic power, making it several times or even dozens of times stronger than normal. At the same time, this concentration effect will cause the magic power to be emitted more in the form of beams and jets, making the magic power less likely to dissipate and greatly increasing the range of the magic power."

"This characteristic also means that most spells cast with a wand are single-target spells."

"But the Magic Tips hypothesis cannot explain non-targeting spells, such as Apparition, Summoning Charm, Revealing Charm, and various summoning spells. After all, in some cases, such as Apparition, it may be necessary to cross a distance of tens of kilometers, and a wizard's magic cannot extend that far."

"Therefore, we proposed the magic antenna hypothesis. This is the second mechanism of action of the wand amplifier."

"For non-directional spells, we speculate that they are generated in a command-like manner. That is, the wizard issues a command, and the world's magic is responsible for carrying it out."

"And the command signals that are sent to the world's magic—which we simply call the magic network—are transmitted through the wand. At this moment, it acts as a signal amplifier."

"So now we have two parts of the conjecture about the wand: the magical tip conjecture applicable to directional spells, and the magical antenna conjecture applicable to non-directional spells."

"Based on these two conjectures, we can make a deduction about the wand's performance."

"According to the theory of the Magic Tips, the function of the wand is to restrain and concentrate the wizard's magic, making it more concentrated, stronger, longer-ranged, and more accurate."

"At this point, we can think of the wand as a water pipe or a gun barrel, and the magic is the water or bullet that is sprayed out through the wand."

"In theory, the thicker the water pipe, the more dispersed the water flow; the thinner the water pipe, the more concentrated the water flow and the greater the pressure."

"However, at the same time, if the pressure is suddenly increased from the wizard's body to the wand, it will also put greater pressure on the tube wall. If it exceeds a certain limit, it may cause the wand to be broken by the impact of magic."

"Therefore, wands usually need a tapered structure with a thicker handle and a thinner tip, gradually concentrating the magic."

"In terms of accuracy, the longer the barrel, the more accurate the bullet trajectory, but an excessively long barrel will lead to more energy loss and waste."

There is a balance to be struck.

"On the other hand, according to the magic antenna hypothesis, the wand is used to transmit and receive signals, acting as a signal amplifier. And magical signals—no matter what form they take, whether they are ethereal or elemental—are waves."

"Everything in the world is a wave. Magic is hardly an exception."

"We proved this through interference experiments."

"And any wave can be described by four physical quantities: wavelength, frequency, amplitude, and wave speed."

"The speed of the magic signal is extremely fast. Our tests have not yet reached its upper limit, but it is most likely also the speed of light."

"Its frequency and wavelength depend on the strength of the magic. The stronger the magic, the shorter the wavelength and the higher the frequency, which is similar to electromagnetic waves. The amplitude depends on the amount of magic. The higher the energy of the magic, the greater the amplitude."

"Once we understand the similarity between magical signals and electromagnetic waves, we can refer to the antennas in the Muggle world to design wands."

"The signal is best when the antenna length is one-quarter of the wavelength."

"Our tests show that the signal waves emitted by wizards are often close to short to medium waves, depending on the strength of their magic. The more powerful the wizard, the stronger their magic and the shorter their wavelength. The magic wavelength of a young wizard is close to medium waves, while the signal waves of an ordinary adult wizard are between short and medium waves, which is about 100m."

"If we calculate it this way, the wand should be close to 25 meters long to be appropriate."

"But wands obviously can't be that long, so in terms of signal strength, the longer the wand, the better."

"In fact, ancient wands were indeed very long."

"If you just look up a few books on the history of wands in the library, you will find that early wands were actually just a cane about two meters tall."

"Its interior uses magical metal as wires, and its head or core uses various precious gems as magical nodes to enhance the wand's power."

"Back then, wands were not only extremely expensive, but they could actually be swung around like clubs."

"Later, through the research of countless wand-making masters, the main material of the wand core was gradually replaced from magical metals to lighter magical plants and animals, and the wand became lighter."

"But here's the problem: how do our wands, which are so short now, possess signal-giving capabilities comparable to those of ancient wands?"

"Muggle antennas don't actually look very long because many antennas use induction technology, which involves adding induction coils at certain locations on the antenna to shorten its physical length. Sometimes, even a spiral coil is used directly as an antenna."

"And our dissection revealed that the wand core also has a similar structure!"

"The core of a wand is like the wire of an antenna. Before processing, the core, such as a dragon's heartstring, a phoenix tail feather, or a unicorn hair, is usually no more than 15 centimeters long. However, after being fused with a magic potion and the wand body, it grows like roots and intertwines with the wand body, greatly increasing its overall length."

"The knots and loops formed between the roots are magical induction coils, and the parallel connection of countless roots forms an antenna array, greatly enhancing the wand's signal."

"These structural changes are what allowed wands to shrink to about ten inches in size today."

"We don't know if those rod-making masters understood the magic antenna theory, but they did achieve this technological advancement through countless generations of exploration."

"However, we can still build upon their achievements and, with the wisdom of Muggle technology, elevate the power of wands to a new level."

"For example, a wand can be seen as a rod-shaped omnidirectional antenna. The signal spills out quickly, so the propagation range is not very far. But what if we change it to a directional antenna? Could we then achieve Apparition across continents, or a Summoning Charm with a range of several kilometers?"

"For example, although the natural growth of the wand core will form an antenna array, due to the lack of design, the antenna array pattern is very chaotic, the signals interfere with each other, and the gain and cancellation effects coexist, which greatly weakens the signal strength."

"If we can control the growth of the wand core and make it form a regular antenna array, the signal strength of the wand will be greatly improved."

"Next, our research will be conducted in two parts."

"Tom and Hermione, using the modeling knowledge you've recently learned, and drawing on the Magic Tips hypothesis and analogies to fluid dynamics, complete the design of the wand's shaft. Of course, if you have the capacity, you can also consider some simple antenna design ideas, such as a helical coil antenna."

"And I was responsible for the structural design of the targeted fusion agent and the cane core."

One of these projects involves extremely profound knowledge of potions, and the other requires powerful modeling and computing capabilities, which the two children are currently unable to participate in.

"Professor, what about me?" Ron asked.

"You..." Murphy thought for a moment, genuinely not expecting Ron to be able to do this job, "Go make me a cup of tea."

(End of this chapter)