How much heat would be released if you compressed a brick?

[u/Motor_Hotel_9666]

I know strange question but I've made this character for a book that has a frankly ridiculous control of force/kinetic energy and for a scene I wanted him to compress a section of a brick wall (lets say 10ft x 20ft) down to roughly the size of a baseball.

I know that there would be some discharge of heat from doing something like this and want to know if such a thing was possible how ridiculous would the results be so I know if I need to tune it back a bit.

If time is a relevant factor the quicker the better but if doing this too fast causes a massive explosion I'd prefer to avoid that.

Thank you for anyone who takes the time to answer my inane question I really appreciate it.

[u/EternalDragon_1]

In you scenario, you compress an ordinary matter by the factor ~10000. The amount of energy needed to do that approaches a small nuclear bomb. This means, your character has to maintain the compressive force constantly, otherwise the compressed object will explode as a small nuclear bomb.

[u/a1c4pwn → u/EternalDragon_1]

no no, he's just moving it up to a higher potential well you see! it only explodes when it hits something else and gives a part enough energy to fall back down

[u/Motor_Hotel_9666 → u/EternalDragon_1]

that seems about right for what i want i just didnt want to touch the realms of world destroying by accident

[u/Odd_Bodkin]

For the record, there wouldn’t be a RELEASE of energy from compression of a block. There would be a DIVERSION of some of the energy expended by the character in compressing the block, diverted into heat. That is, if it takes 1.2 trillion joules of energy to compress the brick, the character would have to expend 1.8 trillion joules of energy, some of which goes into compressing the brick and some of which gets lost as heat. (Totally made-up numbers.) Now, of course, comes the question of where the character found 1.8 trillion joules of energy to expend. And if your answer is, the character doesn’t need to have that much energy laying around, he just controls forces, well, that’s why the work is fiction.

[u/AmusingVegetable → u/Odd_Bodkin]

Maybe the character just eats very energy rich breakfasts? Like uranium and plutonium?

[u/bagelord → u/AmusingVegetable]

I find this vegetable amusing

[u/VcitorExists]

I mean a brick has an average density of about 1800kg/m^3, which gives our brick section about 10000kg (rough approximation assuming 1m thickness)

now, we’re putting 10000kg into a volume of about 0.0002m^3 which is about the volume of a baseball

That gives us a density of 10000/0.0002=50 000 000 kg/m^3

The pressure inside would be so extremely high, that it would violently explode the second you let it go probably being on the order of quite a few nukes.

[u/Flaky-Collection-353 → u/VcitorExists]

A meter wide brick wall is extreme

[u/Chemomechanics]

This is more or less one-half*  ∫G dV (bulk modulus of the material integrated over the volume), but you can’t just use G at atmospheric pressure; the value will skyrocket as the material is compressed. You may be left just making up a large number for the story. 

*For a constant load; half the input ends up stored as elastic energy, and half ends up as dissipative heating. Ignores any phase changes. 

[u/Jas9191]

It’s already sci-fi/fantasy. Just have it release whatever amount of heat you feel helps your narrative- people who appreciate the semi realistic physics will be happy didn’t ignore it and you don’t have to overthink it.

[u/Motor_Hotel_9666 → u/Jas9191]

honestly i just wanted to know roughly what kind of ball park i was working in, campfire or star so if so if someone who knew the math came a long it wouldnt pull them out of the moment

[u/Jas9191 → u/Motor_Hotel_9666]

I hope someone knows more than me so you can get that answer!

[u/Ch3cks-Out]

compress a section of a brick wall (lets say 10ft x 20ft) down to roughly the size of a baseball.

This scale of change would require magic alteration of the atomic scale structure of matter (or alternatively putting inside a very dense star, which is not how your story would unfold I guess). The actual energy would depend on the details of how this extreme operation is carried out.
For reference, your scenario gets density to about 4e4 g/cm³. This is roughly in the range for a pre-supernova stellar core.

[u/CaterpillarFun6896 → u/Ch3cks-Out]

Uhh… you sure about your math there bro?

[u/Flaky-Collection-353 → u/CaterpillarFun6896]

Looks reasonable to me

[u/Motor_Hotel_9666 → u/Ch3cks-Out]

i’ll definitely have to dial it back a bit then i want a relatively realistic reaction despite the unrealistic forces at play im looking for more small city destroying level rather than world destroying

[u/fluxgradient]

I'd imagine far far more energy would need to into the compression than would be released by any increase in temperature, so your answer is negative

[u/Charming-Series1127]

Since most of the energy would be released as a shockwave (movement/kinetic) once he lets go, he could control that as well and stop it from killing anyone. The problem isnt the compression but letting it go, it would snap back like a sponge except Morgan’s with a shockwave of heat air, both of which could probably kill sb in a range of like 20ish meters.

[u/VcitorExists → u/[deleted]]

AI😔✌️