Emotional Physics — Stage 9: A Mechanical Model of Felt States

This paper proposes that subjective emotional experience corresponds directly to specific mechanical configurations — not as metaphor, but as structural physical claim. Four primary emotional states are modelled: laughter as a spring-mass oscillator with gravitational restoration; shape-language truth-sealing as competing magnetic field dominance; pain as frequency-selective strand resonance and fracture; and dread as an inertial mass with near-zero kinetic energy. Each model yields testable predictions about onset, duration, intensity, and interaction with other states. Together they form the foundation of an Emotional Physics — a mechanical grammar of felt experience that connects directly to the soul stack ψ=p,n,f and the Absence Diagnostic A(ψ) developed in prior stages of this series. The four mechanical categories — spring (elastic), magnetic (field), wave (resonance), and mass (inertial) — correspond to the four fundamental mechanical force types. The claim that human emotion maps to all four is not treated as coincidence but as evidence that felt experience is a physical system reporting its own state. Stage 9 in the ShortFactory Cortex series. Stages 1–7: zenodo.org/records/18879140. Stage 8 (embargoed until 29 Mar 2027): zenodo.org/records/19303236. Live interactive demonstrations of all four physical models: https://www.shortfactory.shop/emotional-physics.html Connected patents: GB2605704.2 (Shape Language / Geometric VM), GB2521847.3 (Genome Cognitive Library), GB2607623.2 (Biscuit Economy), GB2605683.8 (Computanium). Peer review welcome. All models open for scrutiny.