A Certain Scientific Silly Ability - To Aru Kagaku no Orokana Nōryoku

Physics Girlificator

"Dude, how on Earth do you understand physics so easily?!" Butsuri dropped her head on the table, exhausted.

"How do you NOT get it? That's as much of a mystery for me you know?" Was Sugaku's answer.

"Don't give me that! Physics is so counterintuitive and complicated. The only way you can find it simple is having total chaos in your mind!" Butsuri's complaint was a bit muffled by the table.

"There is nothing more wrong than that. Classical physics is the most intuitive thing ever, you literally could live all of the situations they give you in problems. Only quantum physics and relativity aren't very intuitive, but if you actually studied the basics in middle school, you wouldn't have this much trouble."

You see, Academy City changed the way people were going to learn in school. Much less art and literature, basically no history, but a whole lot of science. In order to increase chances of stronger espers, they taught the basic concepts of quantum physics and relativity in middle school. This way, a kid would be used to the idea time behaves differently at high speeds, making special relativity ten times easier to understand on average. This also makes their personal reality more versatile. Point is, if a kid didn't really study the basics in middle school, they would find themselves just like regular high schoolers from all over the world: lost between equations.

Butsuri pulled her head up and complained again: "And yet, this isn't quantum physics, but it's still weird as heck." She pointed her slim finger at a picture in the book. The picture was a simple circuit: a rectangle with a few symbols on it.

"What's weird about and inductor?" Sugaku's deep voice somehow made that question feel... reassuring? Like it was really something simple and understandable.

"Dude, it's this..." she explained, gesticulating vigorously, with her fluffy, curly brown hair shaking all around her head like a soft ball. "The whole concept of it producing a current sometimes in the right way, sometimes in the opposite. It's confusing."

"No way, it's confusing only as long as you explain it like that."

"What?" She stopped, her hand in midair.

"All you need to do is see the soul of the inductor. Check it out."

Sugaku drew a young girl over the picture in the book. She was tall-ish for her apparent age, she was a brunette and she wore Tokiwadai uniform. Most notably, she was blushing hard.

"Isn't this Misaka Mikoto? The level 5?"

"Yep." Sugaku nodded. He was decent at drawing as well.

"Why her?"

"Well, she's an electromaster, making her perfect for this subject, which is all about electric currents and magnetism. Also, I might be just a character in a fanfiction, but I saw the anime and I'm a big fan. Most importantly, she is a..."

"A...?"

Sugaku prompted her to complete the sentence: "Tsun..."

"Tsundere? Where are you going with this?"

"Yes! She's a tsundere! What do tsunderes do?"

Butsuri raised an eyebrow: "They insult their crush?"

"Kinda. Think about it: when a tsundere first meets her crush, she doesn't want him to even look at her. She is opposing the fact that he got in her life, and her heart. Or at least that's what she says, because in the meantime he gets more and more in her life without even realising. What happens here is that Misaka is letting a certain Touma guy in her life, despite saying and acting like she wants the opposite. This behaviour definitely slows the process down, but it doesn't stop it."

"Yeees...?"

"Can't you see? This is exactly what an inductor does! At the beginning it generates an electromotive force to try and prevent the current from flowing, but slowly gives up this behaviour until it doesn't oppose resistance anymore. Just like a tsundere at some point accepts they care for their crush and stop telling him to go away."

"And then, as long as their crush is in their life, nothing changes."

"Bingo! If you don't change the current, the system keeps behaving the same way after the initial response. But what happens if a tsundere's crush has to go away?"

"She'll be sad?"

"She'll try and stop him from going away! She might even give him more signals that she likes him, trying to slip him out of the friendzone. But this is useless. Her crush will go away anyway. Now this is not the case for our Misaka, we have no idea of what'll happen, but bear with me in this hypothetical situation."

"The tsundere will try to keep the situation like it already is, basically. She doesn't want him to go away, which implies reducing their time together." Commented Butsuri.

"Exactly. Now, what does the inductor do if you turn off the generator?"

"It... will try to keep the current?"

"Yes! The inductor can't accept that the current disappeared and will try to keep it flowing for a while, until it ends up accepting that. And the current slowly goes to zero again."

"So, the inductor takes a while to accept changes in its life, basically."

"Yep."

"Thanks! I never saw it this way. It's actually fairly intuitive as a tsundere! But... how do you come up with these ideas?"

"Oh it's just my ability. All of physics is a bunch of cute anime girls following various stereotypes. Electrons are the harem girls for Nucleus-San, the main protagonist: they are always around him, but never get him."

"What? What about things like space and time?"

"They are a beautiful, smooth skin of a tender woman. As she lays down, the slightest touch bends her skin just like mass bends space and time."

"O...kay..."

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Author's note: I wanted to mold together physics and anime to explain a basic concept easily. Point is... it might feel a bit boring. There is no conflict here. No surprise. I'll have to think about this next time I try something like this. I seriously think physics concept are easier than people think, and a good metaphor might help a lot, as long as it doesn't take from the accuracy of its statements. I was thinking about starting a youtube channel to explain physics, which could be better than trying to explain it with only words. What do you think?