• db2
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    1 year ago

    Electricity is easy to make though… a couple magnets and some copper wire.

          • tallwookie@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            probably go with a hand-crank zapper or something. it’s tricky to do much without resistors and capacitors.

          • Damage@slrpnk.net
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            1 year ago

            If you can make a generator you can make a motor, just connect them together and have one move when you spin the other

            • Koala@feddit.de
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              1 year ago

              The could do the same with a belt, go away with your flash nonsense youngling

          • Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de
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            1 year ago

            Plating a metal object with a different metal would probably be the simplest, impressive thing. Or just heating a thin wire?

            • IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              How would you buy copper with no money? It’s not like you can exchange your modern money to their currency. So first you need to find a job and any good paying job is probably protected by guilds and you don’t even speak their language so good luck finding a mentor who will offer an apprenticeship. You will be a peasant. Nothing more than a subsistence farmer who has to rent the land and give half his yield to the local lord. Hunting? Killing anything bigger than a fowl will get you in trouble since big game is property of the lord.

              Also copper ore doesn’t lie freely on the ground. You need to mine for that shit and be lucky that there is a source in the vicinity, since you can’t travel very far. Can’t buy a horse with no money.

              And if you found a source you need to convince an entire community to help you mine for copper. You sure as hell can’t do it alone. Good luck convincing them when everyone is busy tending their crops to prepare for the winter. And you don’t even speak their language.

              • BastingChemina@slrpnk.net
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                1 year ago

                I imagine that the best way to make money would be if you manage to build a rm rudimentary still.

                I feel like moonshine would be relatively easy to do and a great way to make profit of no one kills you before.

                Distilled alcohol is quite rudimentary to produce but only appeared late in history. Plus it is great for leisure application, food conservation or medicine.

                  • Intralexical@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    Surely you’ve got a pot or something to cook your food in, right? Stick a leaf or a hollow log over it or whatever. Seriously… Money is fake, and literally everything is materials.

              • Intralexical@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Good luck convincing them when everyone is busy tending their crops to prepare for the winter.

                Just sprinkle some bird poop or bat guano or whatever other nitrogen and phosphorus-rich gunk onto it when they aren’t looking.

              • QuinceDaPence@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                Big-ass piece of cast iron with a little hole in it.

                If you can convince them you know the end product I’m sure the king can point you to his metal workers and in a lot of cases come up with a solution.

                Also, it’s labor intensive but I think you can beat it into wire or use some other methods.

                If the king says to the blacksmith “make that copper long ans skinny” he can probably make it happen.

            • redcalcium@lemmy.institute
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              1 year ago

              Don’t forget it’ll need to be covered with an insulator, else your coils would short circuit and not producing any current. So you’ll need some chemistry to produce insulator thin enough to create your generator.

            • drathvedro@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              It is, but the ancient method is tedious as fuck. It was basically just pulling a piece through dozen of gradually smaller holes, by hand. I dont think you could do one pass extrusion without all of the precision machinery needed to manufacture such machine. But I aint a blacksmith, I just saw the process in some documentary a while ago.

      • pinkdrunkenelephants
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        1 year ago

        You can literally mine lodestone and copper. Ancient people have mined those two things since antiquity. Where do you think it comes from now? Fairies?

          • Tavarin@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            Bring a live translation device, and program it with whatever the expected language is. That alone would be magic to them. And you don;t need to go to a copper mine, there were markets for processed copper. Pulling it into wire is just a case of roughly forming it into a cylinder, then pulling that cylinder through successively smaller holes. A local smith could help you with that.

          • pinkdrunkenelephants
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            1 year ago

            You literally could just go dig some yourself while they’re away and procure it that way.

            • cogman@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              What do you think copper ore looks like? What tools would you use?

              Ancient mining was a punishment, generally a death sentence. It’s hard work often overseen by a slave master.

              Copper ore isn’t concentrated copper either a lot of ore goes into a little copper. There’s a reason only the really wealthy had copper items.

              • pinkdrunkenelephants
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                1 year ago

                Well, in this scenario we’d presumably have our electronic devices with us anyway, so it’s honestly a moot point.

      • db2
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        1 year ago

        You can induce voltage on more than just copper you know. Or maybe you don’t know. You probably don’t know.

        • cogman@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Ever wonder why it goes bronze age and then iron age? It’s because it’s a minor miracle humanity discovered how to smelt iron. Iron requires temperatures higher than you can achieve with just wood. Iron absorbs carbon and sulfur making it worthless (in the wrong mixtures).

          The process is complex and resource intensive.

          Assuming a bronze age civilization, copper or tin is the best you can hope for. Finding a magnet is going to be difficult because there’s not really ferromagnetic materials available. In the modern era the most common material is iron.