Ok before I hit the hay. You can turn into an animal at will. Your clothes and such won’t turn with you but mass is not conserved so you can turn into something much bigger or smaller. It has to be a real creature that does or has existed and I guess if you want a plant that would be fair game. For me its an albatross. could travel around the world. might even manage to carry something that is not to large if packaged right. I am a bit torn though as the ocean is large so maybe a sea creature would be better. like a killer whale. of course then its not great for getting somewhere inland.
Well you didn’t add any caveats to the transformation and you said it’s at will so… If mass is not conserved then I’d just turn into something heavy yet compact like a rhino and harvest infinite energy from the toggling. If I get support from a State I might even choose a whale so we can extract the most energy per toggle. You can basically build an engine from it, and since whales are like 200 tons and I’m 70kg, the conversion ratio would be pretty damn good. Though it would require a dedicated facility, which is why I’d rather go with a rhino or something, which is however about 100 times less efficient so it would require 100 times as much toggling. You get the picture.
I wouldn’t want to spend my life stuck in a power plant.
It’s free energy, yes … but only a relatively small amount of free energy, in the grand scheme of things.
Let’s say you go as big as possible with a blue whale, topping out at 200 metric tons. And let’s say the dedicated facility built for this has a height of 500m from which it can capture the energy of your descent. Each descent can (assuming 100% efficiency of the system) deliver about 980MJ (272kWh) of energy. A 500m drop in complete freefall would take about 10 seconds (disregarding air resistance). But since we need you to survive to do the process over again (rather than splatting into whale goo at the bottom), you’ll need to decelerate gently at the end, which will slow the process down. Capturing energy from the fall will also slow you down. Let’s say the drop takes 20 seconds, minimum. And, as unrealistic as it is, let’s go for a highly optimized scenario of lifting human you back to the top just as quickly, so 20 seconds for the trip back up. Assuming you can transform instantaneously, that’s 40 seconds per cycle – 90 cycles per hour, at the absolute maximum. 90 cycles x 980MJ means you can generate up to 88,200MJ per hour, which is equivalent to 24.5MW.
A fairly average wind turbine like this one will generate 5MW at peak output. So you, as a blue whale power station, can generate a maximum power equivalent to ~5 large wind turbines. It’s not totally free, either, since the machine to capture this energy will be huge and expensive to build – likely bigger and more expensive to build than 5 wind turbines.
(Not to mention, we’re ignoring a lot of minor inefficiencies here. Air resistance will be an energy-sapping factor on both the downward and upward parts of the cycle. Then there’s friction in whatever mechanical setup you build for the machine. Then there’s the energy cost of lifting human you back to the top. Then there’s the inevitable inefficiency of the energy capture, which would more realistically be in the 80-90% range at most, not 100%.)
And to keep up that relatively meager energy production, you’ll have to transform every 20 seconds. 180 times per hour, every hour, as long as you can keep doing it. And assuming you need to be awake to transform, the power station will have to go offline regularly while you nap. It could also be a problematic power source because of its pulsing nature – 20 seconds on, 20 seconds off. That’s messy power to be dumping into a power grid, forcing other energy sources to constantly vary in order to make up for it. You could smooth that out with giant capacitors or something … but then that adds additional inefficiency and power loss into the system.
Yes, it’s neat to be able to cheat physics and get ‘free’ energy … but on a grid level, the amount of free energy you can possibly get this way is pretty trivial. Not worth giving up your whole life for.
Funny you assume this would not lead to almost immediate enslavement.
Be careful what you wish for
Collapsed comic because it's kinda long: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, Zach Weinersmith
@majormajormajormajor@lemmy.ca Posted this before I read your comment lol
Now you just need to find a way to boil some water and… I feel like I’ve heard this one before.
deleted by creator
Lobster.
I’d continue to live my normal life during the day, but transform every night to sleep, and don’t age during that time. Hell, any time I’m not doing something that requires a human body, just push pause on the aging process for a few hours. Careful application could get me an extra ~40-50% lifespan for free.
The lobster’s biggest problem is always having to grow new shells. If every transformation puts me back exactly where I left off, that could be an issue, but with a part-time human to stock my own tank/pool, getting enough to eat as a lobster to get the energy to do that shouldn’t be an insurmountable hurdle.
Outclassed by rejuvenating jellyfish.
Yes, we’re making tier lists about hypothetical animal transformations now.
needs a tierzoo video on this
What about a tortoise? Don’t they live longer?
This came to my mind aswell. Made me also think about why we age and if sleeping in an area without background radiation could have a similar effect. Like sleeping in a lead coffin or underground bunker. But i guess these would still inherit the background radiation from the body itself.
Raccoon. Still got haaaaaands biiiitches
With the second part of that comment you sure give off raccoon vibes lmao
Hell naw man…
My favourite raccoon clip: https://youtu.be/rfbb4yRBH64
Nobody said cats? I’m very disappointed. I’m going to comb my hair, look at you reproachfully, then go to sleep.
Look, in fucking July, my species was renamed the fucking paradoxical sea Muppet (Australyichthys paradoxus), and I’m kind of fucking sore about it.
Fucking Muppet! I’m a fucking seahorse. Fucking look at me you fucking imbeciles. Human fucks! Always fucking with you, fucking shit up, fucking up naming shit, fucking up the sea, ffs they’re the fucking muppets
So, “seahorse” is my answer, thx
First thought is a very small insect, especially a small flying bug, so I could effectively vanish instantly and escape from most any situation.
Of course this comes with some assumptions, such as magically keeping my intelligence. And not aging at hyper speed while transformed, etc.
Yeah my intention was no real gotchas outside of whats listed. so you could effectively disapear as you said as a fly but your clothes and such would fall and you would be naked when you turn back. Honestly the clothes effect would likely that much more make people think you vanishe or teleported or were destroyed or something.
Instantly vanish and escape, yes … but pretty significant chance of getting squished or eaten by some predator while in bug form, and likely to happen so fast you don’t have time to change back.
Having human intellect should help, like knowing to stay away from corners because of spider webs, knowing how windows, doors, and vents work. Also I wouldn’t just stay a fly - I would switch back as soon as feasible. (But might head for a clothing store first)
My human intellect is pretty situationally unaware. I don’t think the risk of being stuck in a web, paralyzed, and slowly drained of life by a spider is worth not hearing about Sharon’s sister’s wedding in Colorado over the weekend.
(But might head for a clothing store first)
So you can buy clothes?
Too bad your wallet is left in the heap of clothes you escaped from…
Oh, good point
Do I get to turn back or is it a one and done thing?
If the latter, then probably a blue whale. I don’t really want to live as a whale but I do want to know in my dying whale breaths that they’ll never get the stench of my bloated 30 ton corpse out of the Australian parliament building.
no real gotchas outside of the stipulated it just your body and not what you are carrying. at will. keep your mind. no percentage life span carry over or such.
A worm
I need to check if he’s telling the truth
Tapeworm. Just hanging out in a warm cosy intestine, protected from the outside world and food dropping on to me so I don’t even have to move.
Bird. Daily commute will be fun.
90s Animorphs kid here. I’ve been considering this for 30 years.
And I’m not telling
A small and cute goat in a petting zoo. You get fed and you can headbutt people and kids to oblivion while everyone thinks it’s cute.
When OP opened talking about hitting the hay, I figured his animal would be a horse.
Bear
Beaver. Any day. Favorite animal period. No doubts or worries at all.
