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Originally Posted by Bethberry
The wind created by his passing would produce several consequences. First, the frictional drag could in fact create higher temperatures than the grass could sustain, with the effect that Legolas would leave a trail of burnt grass tips marking his path.
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I think that you’d have more than just
singed grass tips. If you have air moving fast enough to cause that level of heat via friction, you have an influx of enough oxygen to feed a smoldering grass blade into full flame, reducing it to ash in scant milliseconds. That’s why folks trying to start a fire using the old boy-scout method will blow on the smoldering tinder to coax a flame from it. You wouldn’t have singed tips – at the least you’d have blackened footprints, and possible forest fires.
I am reminded of an account I read some years ago of a reporter taken for a ride in an SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance jet who was warned not to touch the windshield once they hit Mach 2 (approximately 1500 mph or 2450 kph) – the temperature of the glass was high enough to blister the skin. Even so, I doubt that even that speed could have started a fire.
Further, if elves could generate that level of moving air, what’s to prevent them from actual flight? If they can “flod” over grass without harming or even marking it, it would surely be a small step to actual flight. I think there must be some other mechanism by which the elves negated the effects of their weight on snow or grass.
At the risk of bringing Treknobabble into a Tolkien website, I used to think that the elves lack of effect on snow or grass involved a partial negation of the effects of gravity – not so much as to become weightless, otherwise they’d just float away – but enough that their weight does not press down with enough force to mark their passing. However, this theory has as many problems as the wind/friction idea, because what’s to prevent elves from exerting this power just a bit more and achieving actual flight? Or at least the ability to hover over a battle out of reach of swords? (Wow, think of the advantages of a battalion of air-elves at an altitude of 500 feet or so, shooting arrows into a ground-bound division of orcs?)