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So, I've been working on some Sci-Fi concepts lately, and I need help to design some kind of handheld matter manipulator, able to be used for large scale earthwork purposes, by a single man. Maybe altering a graviton field to move soil around, crush rocks, etc.
(I'm unfortunately not a physicist so don't expect sciency explanations).

And I'm currently stuck on the design. I want it to seem coherent enough, with a strong industrial prototype look, and Alien/Halo-like design-wise (No shiny casing, visible internal components, etc).
It lacks an internal power source, and is instead plugged to an exosuit/portable generator with a big power cable, and can be used with only one hand by a normal human without an exosuit (It's tiresome though), with maybe an optional handle on the front.

You can come up with whatever crosses your mind, be it a general shape, some internal component or scientific explanations on how it could work (If a quantum physicist happens to stumble onto this thread). I really need help on this one.

 LethalShade wrote:
or scientific explanations on how it could work

Don't do this. Technobabble explanations of how your technology "works" almost always hurt your writing. It's not going to be plausible technology with an explanation that actually makes sense from a realism point of view, so if you try to "explain" it all you're doing is showing off how you don't really understand science. Instead you need to do four things:

1) Define what your new technology is capable of. If it's going to move soil around how much weight can it move at once? How fast can it move it? Can it move solid objects like rocks?

2) Define what it isn't capable of. For example, maybe the energy required to move an object increases exponentially with its mass, so more than a shovel-full of soil is impossible to move. Or maybe the effect can only work over a short distance, so you can't dig a hole from a mile away.

3) Think about the consequences of what you just designed. A magic soil-mover is probably also a pretty good weapon if you move half of someone's head instead of a heap of dirt. A rock crusher is also a tank crusher. Altering gravity probably has a lot of applications that go way beyond making the world's most complicated shovel. And really, why did anyone use this to build a shovel in the first place? Labor is usually cheap, and I can't imagine many situations where a suit of power armor and a gravity manipulator is really more efficient than hiring a few guys with $5 shovels. Thinking about this might seem excessive, but few things kill a story involving new technology faster than someone asking "but what happens if I do X" and finding a loophole where your shovel is actually a source of free energy that should destroy the entire concept of money as we know it and also a weapon that makes nukes look trivial.

4) NEVER BREAK THESE RULES. Once you've decided what your new toy can and can't do you have to be consistent with it. Don't have its abilities vary from scene to scene because you didn't invest enough thought into defining your world.

 Peregrine wrote:

 LethalShade wrote:
or scientific explanations on how it could work

Don't do this. Technobabble explanations of how your technology "works" almost always hurt your writing. It's not going to be plausible technology with an explanation that actually makes sense from a realism point of view, so if you try to "explain" it all you're doing is showing off how you don't really understand science.

That's why I wrote "If a quantum physicist happens to stumble onto this thread."

For the rest, it's designed for large scale earthwork on some human remote colonies, as well as building. There is no war at the moment in this universe (No sentient aliens, rival human faction nor civil war), so a weaponized version, although probably under consideration, isn't planned yet (Of course, it is potent as a weapon. Think of it as an improved version of Half Life Grav Gun).
Energy wise, it'll alway draw more energy from the power source than what it can generate, obviously. Energy will probably be its main limitation. Thanks for the reply.

I did miss one other question you need to ask yourself, outside of that four-step process for the technology itself: WHY does this grav-shovel exist? Does it matter for plot reasons? Is it required to establish a particular impression of the setting? Is it just a piece of background scenery that the audience shouldn't really care about? Why can't they just use normal earth-moving technology that exists in the real world? My initial impression is that it seems like a pretty odd thing to even think about, unless it has some kind of purpose in the story. And if it does have a major purpose then you really need to figure out what it needs to do to fill that purpose before you worry about "explaining" it.

 LethalShade wrote:
There is no war at the moment in this universe (No sentient aliens, rival human faction nor civil war), so a weaponized version, although probably under consideration, isn't planned yet

This seems incredibly implausible. Given what we know of human history there will always be rival factions, and they will be building weapons even if there isn't active shooting going on. You'd better make sure that your plot doesn't involve any opportunity where someone could use their grav-shovel as a weapon or the consequences of your new technology would have an impact on war/politics/etc in the setting.

Energy wise, it'll alway draw more energy from the power source than what it can generate, obviously. Energy will probably be its main limitation. Thanks for the reply.

I think you missed the point a bit there. You come up with your fancy new toy, and then someone realizes that oops, the laws of physics you had to change to make it work also have some side effects for other technology. In your case the grav-shovel itself might not be an energy source, but your explanation might imply something that could be used as an infinite energy source. So you leave your reader asking "how do they have a functioning economy now that {grav shovel technology} allows infinite energy" or "why are they building grav-shovels instead of FTL travel with that technology" or whatever.

But really, infinite energy was just one example. The important thing is that scifi authors often come up with something that sounds cool but implies really awkward consequences that the author never even thought about. So either you have plot holes where the audience feels like it should be possible to do something but it never happens, or you have to handwave a bunch of awkward special-case explanations for why it only works in the ways that you want it to. It's much better to think through all of the consequences of your changes to the laws of physics and avoid the problem.

Well, I was mainly asking for purely visual advices -> How does it look ? With scientific explanations as a bonus.

As for the "no war" thing, there's probably tons of rival or terrorist factions, but they're not active yet. And well, they're pretty much unimportant plot-wise anyway.

However you made me think about all the implications and I'll take some time fleshing out the setting, to avoid some unforeseen consequences.

 LethalShade wrote:
Well, I was mainly asking for purely visual advices -> How does it look ?

How do you want it to look? What does the rest of your stuff look like? You can't really design one small item like this in isolation without seeing the rest of your visual concepts. If you want any useful advice you're going to have to post some stuff.

Here ya go, the drawings are pretty crude tho ( It's one of those "not enough motivation to draw properly" days).



The second one is shoulder-held.

So its basically a man portable tractor beam. Just say its manipulates matter by means of a magnetic field, which itself isn't strong enough to do anything other than apply a minor force to the object. Call it a Traktor Shovel and be done with it. No further explanation necessary.

Yah?

Well, take this and compact it into a handheld tool.

As for the magnetic field idea, I don't know if it would affect non-metallic matter on a macroscopic scale.

Any polar molecules can potentially be manipulated by a magnetic field.

 LethalShade wrote:
Well, take this and compact it into a handheld tool.

Hmm, I dunno. Seems to high tech.

It's way 3hightech5me.

Grey Templar : Okay, thanks.

You can use one of these, I guess. It uses power and makes dirt fly like magic, although to be honest the shovel would probably be faster.

We've seen an idea like this before, it was just used on... well "not dirt".



I think you should describe your tech as a "heavy lifter". It leaves room for your original idea but broadens the utility of the technology..

For all the helpful comments about shovels and backhoes, if you are dealing with hard ground, they aren't very practical but maybe a device that can basically envelop a cubic foot (or sphere of similar proportions) of matter in a containment field then moves it without more effort than waving your device would be a helpful solution. Even in soft ground, shovels are a lot of work, nevermind if you are working in hard/rocky/rooty soil.

Seems like a lot of effort worrying about something that's going to be largely tangential to the plot itself. It's a prop. By all means, be detailed about it's description, but unless your plot is about this object and the scientific explanation of how it works, then don't worry so hard about it, lest you accidentally pull a Tolkien and write chapters of borderline tangential experimental poetry into one of your novels.

Or at least save it for the appendices

On a fundamental level, all matter (and perhaps even spacetime itself) conceivably derives its properties from subatomic energy/particles vibrating at specific frequencies. This is kind of what string theory is. If you were able to tap into those frequencies and manipulate them, you could change the properties of matter and space. I don't know how you would even begin to do that, as it would involve the manipulation of subatomic particles that we haven't even discovered yet. But it could involve bombarding the area with a beam of hypothetical particles (a type of radiation) that will bring about some change in the affected area. Currently, we use particle accelerators to create new particles. So perhaps your device could have some kind of built in synchrotron or cyclotron structure (both look quite distinctive), or even an array of them. I found some examples online of what that might look like:



If you wanted to get more specific about the type of particle, then it would depend on exactly what you want the machine to do. But as Peregrine pointed out, supplying more detail will likely raise more questions than it answers. I agree that less is probably more when it comes to these things.