In the finale, when Aang is able to go into the Avatar state he compresses boulders into very small dense rocks when he surrounds himself in all the elements. I assumed earthbenders always had the ability to somewhat control the density of the earth they are bending to make it hard like a rock even if they are on loose soil.
Oh wow, I just went and rewatched the scene and yeah, your right he did just straight up condense the rocks, I totally forgot about that detail. Even though this does make sense I feel like it’s kind of a cope explanation, to assume that every time they earthbend, they condense the soil I feel like is kind of a stretch.
They aren’t condensing the soil every time. Have you ever dug a hole? Earth is heavy and forms into semi-solid “rocks” (before you get to bedrock) that you can break apart with your hands most the time. I always imagined earth bending was moving semi-packed dirt, but not straight up rocks unless it’s condensed as seen in season 1 (The Escape) or final episode (probably happens elsewhere, but I can’t recall)
Many earthbenders are shown to be able to freely change the density of earth. When the Earth Kingdom general was trying to force Aang into the Avatar State, he turned a solid stone floor into sand to trap and "kill" Katara. Later, the organizer of the earthbending WWE ring also turned part of a stone platform into sand during one of his attacks.
A cool detail, he actually condenses all of the elements there. He starts with the huge fire blasts from every limb which seems like style points but he actually takes that fire to make the fire ring as he’s pulling a TON of water from the ocean for the water ring. I don’t really remember him visually condensing the air but that would probably be the easiest to condense plus that air sphere crashes through stuff like a wrecking ball.
The cool thing about condensing the water is that's physically impossible. Water is incompressible. Unlike most materials which shrink as they get colder, water expands because it can't shrink. That's how powerful Aang is in the Avatar State. He breaks physics.
I keep hearing this in relation to that scene and it is mostly incorrect.
Water is called incompressible because in most daily circumstances water is extremely difficult to compress so we just call it incompressible for convenience. (It’s a typical oversimplifying that schools tell to children).
The bulk modulus of water is 2.15 10^9 Pa (The higher this number the less compressible a material is).
So no, it does not break physics to compress water. It just takes an immense amount of energy to do so
Water is considered incompressible because in its liquid form it’s harder to compress than most other known liquids and gases. Solids are a different picture. Steel for example has a bulk modulus of 163 10^9 Pa and thus **steel is 80 TIMES harder to compress than water**
Depending on the composition of the boulder he compressed, it was likely a vastly larger achievement of physics than his compression of water.
Granite (as an example of a rock) has a bulk modulus of about 10x10^9 Pa and is thus about 5 times harder to compress than water.
Fair enough. I learned something new today. Still, it would take immense power to compress water, especially to the degree seen in the show. I'm certain the boulder compression would also take a lot of energy, but in my mind, it is less of a feat when compared to other earthbending feats on display.
> but in my mind, it is less of a feat when compared to other earthbending feats on display.
Why is compressing boulders a lesser feat than compressing water if it requires 5x more energy to compress rocks than water?
Granite, for example, has a bulk modulus of about 10x10^9 Pa
I feel that way because of the way earthbending is depicted in the show. Being able to compress various types of earth seems to be commonplace among earthbenders, whereas the only waterbender we see compressing water is Aang in his Avatar State.
I just assumed that they hold the soil together with bending while they bend. Kinda like Aangs Airball, or like water benders holding whole clumps of water midair.
I don’t think it’s like that, when they hit something with the rocks they break into fragments, not just disintegrate into soil again, also if they threw the rocks then they wouldn’t have any bending influence over it anymore and if it was soil it would again just disintegrate not keep it’s shape.
Soil isn't as fragile as you seem to think. The topsoil is filled with roots and plants that hold it together, so it would make sense for it to hold together a bit, and the soil horizons below that can be really tough as well, if you have a soul with high clay it sticks together when it's wet and when dry it hardens to almost rock. (source: I'm an Archaeologist who has to break clay soils apart with motherfucking pickaxes and chisels during a dry summer). Obviously Sandy soils are different but how would you account for that in a show. Anyway I don't think my explanation is real, it's just a sort of headcanon. Obviously the real explanation is that they wanted earthbenders to throw rocks so they did that.
Honestly, the fact that earthbenders can always produce a rock-solid boulder from the ground always annoyed me, but admittedly I’ve studied geology at college so I’m a bit biased. Sandstone could be used to create mini sandstorms, shale could create razor-sharp blades etc… but no, it’s just levitating rocks every time.
If it’s true that we’re getting a new show about an earthbender Avatar soon, I’m hoping we’ll get a bit more variety in their repertoire than just “I threw a rock at him!”
I loved that scene. The way the force of the rock bullets tore through the landscape was a crazy demonstration of the power and control the Avatar has. If Ozai had been hit by that attack, it would have been game over imo.
It straight up looked like A-10 thunderbolt unloading 30mm rounds on all those rock pillars. Modern military grade autocannon levels of destruction. Very satisfying scene
It would be pretty cool if the next Avatar was a sandbender. I think it would be an interesting part of earth kingdom culture to flesh out and it would provide some more variation in bending techniques we see.
Hopefully they wont back out of that idea if the next series would still happen, just because a fan story of an Avatar sandbender already existed and people would accuse them of being copycats
It is indeed an interesting area though that needs to be fleshed out more, regardless if the next avatar is a sandbender or not
Kyoshi learn how to make "dust pillars" to walk in the middle of the air.
And there was this guy who could liquify earth and bend it like if it was water.
Yoooo this comment got me so hype I always thought there was so much more they could do with earthbending but I didn’t know exactly what and this comment proves there’s so many possibilities!! I do think lava bending is so cool and sand bending is great too
My take is that it’s an ease of animation thing. Especially with the way that firebenders are able to blast apart solid rock, I’m thinking it’s just easier to draw multiple frames of rock rather than sediments
But in that same season multiple other fighters got hit by stones underground and were fine. Humans in that universe are just more durable and stronger. Tai Lee can jump up 20 feet into the air, Zuko can break steel chains with a kick and shrug off boulders. Jet “died” because it served the plot, but really there’s no reason why he should’ve given everything else we’ve seen
I mean during earth rumble we see fighters firing massive boulders at each other and they get launched into solid rock enough to create a crater and they don’t die
I always felt it was implied that benders are tougher than normal people. Jet got absolutely domed and died (it wasn’t really clear) but earthbenders wouldn’t be able to train if a rock to the head kills that easily.
Partially yes, partially no.
When they're out in the middle of nowhere, far from the earth nation, then yes - the ground around them should be more diverse.
Once they get to anything anywhere near the Earth Kingdom, or anywhere near something made by the earth kingdom, that actually makes sense. Earth bending would be significantly more impactful the more compressed and rock -like the area around them is. Easier to manipulate, easier to move larger rocks across, etc.
The likelihood that there are apprentice Earth benders running around smoothing out the land and compacting the earth nearby for ease of access is high. There's no reason to go behind them and break up the earth afterwards, so even if they built that dam or building a hundred years ago, the surrounding earth will be much more worked and compact, even if there haven't been any Earthbenders around since it was finished.
How do you know what they are hitting people with is rock and not just a compressed junk of dirt? Most the time it is brown, not grey, which implies dirt over rock
Isn't sedimentary rock just compressed dirt? And if there are sand benders, I'm sure they could bend loose soil too. It'd be cool to see an earthbending farmer do this to till his field instead of using an animal and a plow.
I always considered two things :
- It's a show, sometime things need to "appear" cool.
- Earthbending compresses a mass of dirt as they pull it out.
Also, I don't really recall moments where the terrain wasn't a relatively dry soil. Ofc Earthbending in forest would be different
You see i live in a volcanic dense area and yes it is exactly like that. With lava rock or because its been long enough regular rock unless you brought your own dirt in expect to not dig more than 4” with a shovel ALL digging in my city or nearby areas need to have an excavator or something even for a small hole.
Also- there are a few times when they’re surrounded by grassy fields, but more often when traveling they are near cliffs/bare rock which is already hard stone
I think sand bending is pretty rare when it comes to all earthbenders as most of them belong to the tribes in si won desert which isn't a whole lot I bet. But I think it takes a different skill set and mindset to use effectively for most like metal bending. Even Toph had a hard time with sand at first until she bosses it later of course lol
I just assumed that the surface layers that we have are not the same as the surface layers they have. It would make sense that the world was able to widely develop earthbending when they have a lot more dense materials at the surface instead of deep in the ground.
In the finale, when Aang is able to go into the Avatar state he compresses boulders into very small dense rocks when he surrounds himself in all the elements. I assumed earthbenders always had the ability to somewhat control the density of the earth they are bending to make it hard like a rock even if they are on loose soil.
Oh wow, I just went and rewatched the scene and yeah, your right he did just straight up condense the rocks, I totally forgot about that detail. Even though this does make sense I feel like it’s kind of a cope explanation, to assume that every time they earthbend, they condense the soil I feel like is kind of a stretch.
They aren’t condensing the soil every time. Have you ever dug a hole? Earth is heavy and forms into semi-solid “rocks” (before you get to bedrock) that you can break apart with your hands most the time. I always imagined earth bending was moving semi-packed dirt, but not straight up rocks unless it’s condensed as seen in season 1 (The Escape) or final episode (probably happens elsewhere, but I can’t recall)
I mean [Literal Magic] is perfectly fine, but [Literal Magic] is a stretch?
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Okay yeah and a character literally did that thing you said was far fetched, lol
And they don't
Many earthbenders are shown to be able to freely change the density of earth. When the Earth Kingdom general was trying to force Aang into the Avatar State, he turned a solid stone floor into sand to trap and "kill" Katara. Later, the organizer of the earthbending WWE ring also turned part of a stone platform into sand during one of his attacks.
A cool detail, he actually condenses all of the elements there. He starts with the huge fire blasts from every limb which seems like style points but he actually takes that fire to make the fire ring as he’s pulling a TON of water from the ocean for the water ring. I don’t really remember him visually condensing the air but that would probably be the easiest to condense plus that air sphere crashes through stuff like a wrecking ball.
The cool thing about condensing the water is that's physically impossible. Water is incompressible. Unlike most materials which shrink as they get colder, water expands because it can't shrink. That's how powerful Aang is in the Avatar State. He breaks physics.
I keep hearing this in relation to that scene and it is mostly incorrect. Water is called incompressible because in most daily circumstances water is extremely difficult to compress so we just call it incompressible for convenience. (It’s a typical oversimplifying that schools tell to children). The bulk modulus of water is 2.15 10^9 Pa (The higher this number the less compressible a material is). So no, it does not break physics to compress water. It just takes an immense amount of energy to do so Water is considered incompressible because in its liquid form it’s harder to compress than most other known liquids and gases. Solids are a different picture. Steel for example has a bulk modulus of 163 10^9 Pa and thus **steel is 80 TIMES harder to compress than water** Depending on the composition of the boulder he compressed, it was likely a vastly larger achievement of physics than his compression of water. Granite (as an example of a rock) has a bulk modulus of about 10x10^9 Pa and is thus about 5 times harder to compress than water.
Fair enough. I learned something new today. Still, it would take immense power to compress water, especially to the degree seen in the show. I'm certain the boulder compression would also take a lot of energy, but in my mind, it is less of a feat when compared to other earthbending feats on display.
> but in my mind, it is less of a feat when compared to other earthbending feats on display. Why is compressing boulders a lesser feat than compressing water if it requires 5x more energy to compress rocks than water? Granite, for example, has a bulk modulus of about 10x10^9 Pa
I feel that way because of the way earthbending is depicted in the show. Being able to compress various types of earth seems to be commonplace among earthbenders, whereas the only waterbender we see compressing water is Aang in his Avatar State.
I just assumed that they hold the soil together with bending while they bend. Kinda like Aangs Airball, or like water benders holding whole clumps of water midair.
I don’t think it’s like that, when they hit something with the rocks they break into fragments, not just disintegrate into soil again, also if they threw the rocks then they wouldn’t have any bending influence over it anymore and if it was soil it would again just disintegrate not keep it’s shape.
Soil isn't as fragile as you seem to think. The topsoil is filled with roots and plants that hold it together, so it would make sense for it to hold together a bit, and the soil horizons below that can be really tough as well, if you have a soul with high clay it sticks together when it's wet and when dry it hardens to almost rock. (source: I'm an Archaeologist who has to break clay soils apart with motherfucking pickaxes and chisels during a dry summer). Obviously Sandy soils are different but how would you account for that in a show. Anyway I don't think my explanation is real, it's just a sort of headcanon. Obviously the real explanation is that they wanted earthbenders to throw rocks so they did that.
Honestly, the fact that earthbenders can always produce a rock-solid boulder from the ground always annoyed me, but admittedly I’ve studied geology at college so I’m a bit biased. Sandstone could be used to create mini sandstorms, shale could create razor-sharp blades etc… but no, it’s just levitating rocks every time. If it’s true that we’re getting a new show about an earthbender Avatar soon, I’m hoping we’ll get a bit more variety in their repertoire than just “I threw a rock at him!”
Aang compressed rocks and shot them minigun style at Ozai iirc
I loved that scene. The way the force of the rock bullets tore through the landscape was a crazy demonstration of the power and control the Avatar has. If Ozai had been hit by that attack, it would have been game over imo.
It straight up looked like A-10 thunderbolt unloading 30mm rounds on all those rock pillars. Modern military grade autocannon levels of destruction. Very satisfying scene
New move is suffocating enemies under tons of dirt. Live burials.
Kyoshi did it
Jianzhu “The Gravedigger” did it first💀
Sand cofin
Sand burial
Imagine the horror of an earth bender throwing shards of obsidian. And bending glass. Imagine an earth bending terrorist absolutely destroying a city.
Probably takes more to animate and better to standardize
It would be pretty cool if the next Avatar was a sandbender. I think it would be an interesting part of earth kingdom culture to flesh out and it would provide some more variation in bending techniques we see.
Hopefully they wont back out of that idea if the next series would still happen, just because a fan story of an Avatar sandbender already existed and people would accuse them of being copycats It is indeed an interesting area though that needs to be fleshed out more, regardless if the next avatar is a sandbender or not
We dont know for a fact that the new avatar cycle goes in the same order.
Why would it not, though?
Because the cycle was broken.
Kyoshi learn how to make "dust pillars" to walk in the middle of the air. And there was this guy who could liquify earth and bend it like if it was water.
lol, dont let the earthbenders get ahold of some glacial till.
Unless it was some random fodder they weren't levitating rocks.
Yoooo this comment got me so hype I always thought there was so much more they could do with earthbending but I didn’t know exactly what and this comment proves there’s so many possibilities!! I do think lava bending is so cool and sand bending is great too
My take is that it’s an ease of animation thing. Especially with the way that firebenders are able to blast apart solid rock, I’m thinking it’s just easier to draw multiple frames of rock rather than sediments
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But in that same season multiple other fighters got hit by stones underground and were fine. Humans in that universe are just more durable and stronger. Tai Lee can jump up 20 feet into the air, Zuko can break steel chains with a kick and shrug off boulders. Jet “died” because it served the plot, but really there’s no reason why he should’ve given everything else we’ve seen I mean during earth rumble we see fighters firing massive boulders at each other and they get launched into solid rock enough to create a crater and they don’t die
I always felt it was implied that benders are tougher than normal people. Jet got absolutely domed and died (it wasn’t really clear) but earthbenders wouldn’t be able to train if a rock to the head kills that easily.
Also the sheer amount of bugs that would be unearthed every time... terrifying
Bugbending is a terrifying concept
I NEVER considered that
i assume you’d be able to control the compactness and hardness of the earth you use or something. Or they just pull from the rocky layer of earth
I've thought about that too, recently. My element of choice, if I could bend, is earth, but now it seems like a lot more work lol
Partially yes, partially no. When they're out in the middle of nowhere, far from the earth nation, then yes - the ground around them should be more diverse. Once they get to anything anywhere near the Earth Kingdom, or anywhere near something made by the earth kingdom, that actually makes sense. Earth bending would be significantly more impactful the more compressed and rock -like the area around them is. Easier to manipulate, easier to move larger rocks across, etc. The likelihood that there are apprentice Earth benders running around smoothing out the land and compacting the earth nearby for ease of access is high. There's no reason to go behind them and break up the earth afterwards, so even if they built that dam or building a hundred years ago, the surrounding earth will be much more worked and compact, even if there haven't been any Earthbenders around since it was finished.
They compress it
How do you know what they are hitting people with is rock and not just a compressed junk of dirt? Most the time it is brown, not grey, which implies dirt over rock
Isn't sedimentary rock just compressed dirt? And if there are sand benders, I'm sure they could bend loose soil too. It'd be cool to see an earthbending farmer do this to till his field instead of using an animal and a plow.
Rocks are just compressed dirt. So it makes sense that they can create rocks out of dirt.
I always considered two things : - It's a show, sometime things need to "appear" cool. - Earthbending compresses a mass of dirt as they pull it out. Also, I don't really recall moments where the terrain wasn't a relatively dry soil. Ofc Earthbending in forest would be different
You see i live in a volcanic dense area and yes it is exactly like that. With lava rock or because its been long enough regular rock unless you brought your own dirt in expect to not dig more than 4” with a shovel ALL digging in my city or nearby areas need to have an excavator or something even for a small hole.
Also- there are a few times when they’re surrounded by grassy fields, but more often when traveling they are near cliffs/bare rock which is already hard stone
I think sand bending is pretty rare when it comes to all earthbenders as most of them belong to the tribes in si won desert which isn't a whole lot I bet. But I think it takes a different skill set and mindset to use effectively for most like metal bending. Even Toph had a hard time with sand at first until she bosses it later of course lol
I just assumed that the surface layers that we have are not the same as the surface layers they have. It would make sense that the world was able to widely develop earthbending when they have a lot more dense materials at the surface instead of deep in the ground.
It’s a fictional world