Forums » Epic Week 2021 » Puzzle 2 Symbol (SOLVED)

Throwing some random stuff out here... we have a list of substances and their melting points. Most are metals, but of the rocks...

Andesite is a gray to black volcanic rock with between about 52 and 63 weight percent silica.

Quartz IS silica, or a form of it.

Olivine, however, is a mafic rock and is low in silica.

Quartz really might be it, but I don't feel like I have enough information. Oop. Might hit the books again :V Because I really haven't found much useful that can be cited properly.

I'm really struggling to see how the third clue plays a role!

I mean, I know about seismic devices. But to check a volcano's heat? I don't recall what sort of devices those would be...

I know there are big probes you can just stick into a lava flow, as well as devices to check heat from a distance. Maybe the "From below" is implying that the temperature is being measured while it's still magma?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrometer Volcano device? :,)

Also I wonder if it's important that one of the "people" in the letters and journals was alive for over 1,000 years, had hatchlings, and was known by almost everyone else? Hm. Emnunydae or whatever...

Ah, probably. Do you know what those are called/made of? If that's relevant, it might be easier to figure out why they'd need a bunch of gemstones for it.

Silicon carbide, I think. I dunno if those gemstones are relevant at all...

The new materials mention a nickel beryllium device that withstands heat!

Hooray, yes! I'm having so much fun reading through all the research. I feel really anxious about the two who were writing about cosmos dinner. LOL. :,)
And seriously, is Emnunydae a dragon or what?! The characters used there are all so cool. I also wonder about the relevance of Liri... One journal entry is talking about how to calm the mountain, as well as a bunch of stuff about plants growing in ash, and all of that... and one is from November of 583, talking about doing everything they can... (At first I thought that one was 1583!!!! But, doy, I think it's November 1 583. silly me. :,) ) And the other is full of sketches of toads? Who is this person?!

But enough rambling, I suppose. I'm considering trying to put all of the journals, letters, connections, etc., in order- would that be useful to anyone, or can you do that fairly quickly in your heads?

No one has done that yet, and it might be helpful! Remember there are two different eras! The Era of Basilisk is the later one. I'm not sure if we know the name of the earlier one yet.

I'm so thrilled that you're enjoying the documents! I worked so hard to make them fun to work with, whether or not a person was even trying to solve puzzles.

Of course! A mystery, wizards, and medieval- How could I not? I'm sure any book lover/historian shares those sentiments, whether they're into all the genres or not... Besides, you can see a lot of work went into them. U.U

Been mucking around with some more research about volcanoes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcanian_eruption (type of volcanic eruption that is classified as 'explosive', and has magma that contains higher silica)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magma#Intermediate_magma

I'm guessing that the third clue might have to do with the temperature of the magma involved? Nickel-beryllium (NiBe - or would it be BeNi?) alloy has a theoretical melting point of up to 1315 °C - so the volcano's magma would have to be cooler than that, since the probes made out of that metal survived; nickel's melting point is higher than beryllium, so I'm taking the lower number there. Cast iron's melting point is given at 1204C, and the probes were destroyed then, so hotter than that.

I don't know if this helps or if someone's mentioned before, but there are a bunch of different metals/rocks listed in the menu! Quartz is one of them!

I was really going for the quartz thing, but I'm rather unpracticed at some types of math, such as the type which this requires. So I had trouble pursuing much more of that. :,)

There's these little devices that i've used once or twice before, called peltier coolers. They take the heat from one side and move it to the other. They're made out of, as google tells me, "bismuth telluride, antimony telluride, and bismuth selenide"

Could be one of those

EDIT:

silicon germanium is also used!!!!

It was mentioned a bit ago but Rhyolite is real! Wiki says it’s one of the most silica rich volcanic rocks, which leads to explosive eruptions.

Hmmm. A good lead! But the third clue we've got - which again, I'm like 85% certain is talking about temperature ranges - doesn't quite match; the article there says that rhyolite is formed at temps of 800-1000C, which is too low to melt the cast iron probes mentioned.

But is there another rock that matches the high silica content and explosive formations, but is formed when at a higher temp? 1200-1300C?

I'm not certain that the new clue adds much more than what I've already got figured, hrm - the temperature to melt cast iron and leave nickel standing is definitely in the more-than-1200C range but less than 1400whateverC.

Time to page more through this list of rocks, I guess!