My own wand theory

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 54836

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Eric Oppen" <oppen at m...> wrote:
> I've always thought that a wand is analogous to an antenna for a
> radio transmitter/receiver.  A radio can receive or transmit without
> one, but the transmission is much easier with an antenna of some 
> sort.
> 
> ...edited...
> 
> Now, to take the radio/magic analogy a bit farther, one can 
> postulate that "frequencies" of magic are like blood types---some 
> are much more common than others. ....  His "frequency type" might be 
> the magical equivalent of blood type A-positive, while Harry (and 
> Tom Riddle/Voldemort) may be the equivalent of AB-negative in terms 
> of rarity.
> 
> Comments?
> 
> --Eric, 

bboy_mn:

I've always tried to explain this by using musical analogies but your
radio broadcast analogy is an excellent way to visualize what is
happening.

Short course on Radio broadcast-
The strength of a radio transmission hinges on how accurately the
transmitter's components are tuned to the broadcast frequency, just as
how well you recieve a radio transmission hinges on how accurately
you've tuned the radio to the frequency you are tyring to receive.
This is done with bandpass filters. If any of the filter's components
are slightly out of tune, the transmission band become broader and
lower in amplitude; noisier and weaker. As all components of the
bandpass filter become tuned to the transmission frequency, the band
becomes narrower and the spike of amplitude becomes higher. If tuned
to perfection in a perfect world, the power spike would reach toward
infinity.

Back to Wands-
This is very analogous to the way I view all the components and design
aspects of a wand. The more precisely Ollivander matches all the
components and design parameters of a wand, the more precisely and
powerfully that wand will perform for a well matched wizard. 

I think a radio antenna as an anlogy for a wizard's wand works very
well. Despite the fact that an antenna is nothing but a piece of wire,
it must be precisely tuned to the transmitter's components and the
transmission frequency. Matching the wizard to the wand just adds one
more component to the magical transmitter, and just like all the other
wand parameters, the more well match the wizard is, the more precisely
the magic produced will be focused.

Finely tuned wizards-
Taking what you suggested and appling it to wizards in training, we
can see the same 'Radio' analogy. Think about the first day in Charms
Class when they all tried to levitate the feather. They are all
magical people, they had the wand, they had the right words, they
practiced their 'swish and flick', so why couldn't they make the
feather move? 

Extending your theory, my theory becomes the belief that learning
magic is a matter of 'tuning' yourself in to your magic. Certainly a
few weeks after their first attempt, as the junior wizards and witches
become more experienced and more focused, they were all able to
levitate the feather easily. 

So magical training become a matter of 'tuning' your own internal
magic to the 'frequency' of a particular charm while at the same time
becoming more attuned to your own internal magic in general.

Applying this theory, we see that wizards would certainly become
better with time, and experience. 

Just a few thoughts.

bboy_mn