MATERIA: HOW DOES IT WORK?

[Goldenboko]

Some very good points raised in here except the ones that said it's magic. The game gives Sephiroth his opportunity to laugh at the usage of the term (despite the fact the Command is called Magic) so I'd say it's pretty bogus to put it down to "magic"

No, it's fine to call it magic once you've taken a butt-load of a real science courses. Almost all games attempts to explain the "powers" of it's inhabitants are usually actually pretty poor just take the first sentence of HC's post:

Materia work in the same way light bulbs and other electronics work. They all have the potential to do something, but without the proper energy, they can't be activated. By passing ones MP through the materia like an electrical current, one can activate them.

Oh it's like circuits, duh, that totally makes the fact they call inter-dimensional portals completely explained!

Even Mass Effect who incorporates more scientific explanations into many of the game's aspects still pretty much has to chalk a lot of stuff up to "space magic".

EDIT: Another good one.

Command materia such as slash all, cover, and double cut also store kinetic energy,

Any "stored kinetic energy" is potential energy and they aren't REALLY explaining anything? How the hell are the pumping your body with energy? And what type? Because electric and heat energy would just destroy any body they are pumped into, we get electric energy pumped into us in real life by lightning and when our bodies have excess heat they are just running a fever. It sure as hell isn't actual Kinetic energy being pumped into them, because that is just energy associated with motion. By saying materia "adds kinetic energy to the body", they are just restating what we already know, somehow materia makes a body stronger and faster. They are not providing an explanation of how it works. They're writer's not scientists. It works through magic or gtfo.