Quote Originally Posted by Munsu
Also, would a projectile that has been shot magically harm his hand? For example, when Mikoto shoots a coin using electricity towards him, if he had put his hand up would it had pierced it? For some reason I think that if he were to touch the coin, the coin would lose all it's momentum... since the force that theoretically was driving it forward (the magic/abilities) is negated, so it might return to its original stationary state. Might not be probable, but I think it would be quite cool that way.
I was actually going to write the same thing in the series thread, but realised that speed as such does not require any energy input. Only acceleration/deceleration requires energy. Momentum is static (conservation of momentum). So, however an object gains its speed, the speed is ultimately a physical attribute that has got nothing to do with magic anymore and thus is nothing Touma's power can remove. You could say the acceleration is separated from the deceleration in that sense.

However, I still can't accept any fancy explanations how he can negate energy just like that. I simply can't see such a difference between matter and energy as the manga author apparently can. Both are physical properties of this world. For magic (or ESP functions) to have any effect on a human, it should somehow affect this reality, either by creating matter or energy interaction (the magic is converted into energy, like heat or it changes the state of matter directly). Otherwise magic shouldn't have any effect whatsoever on Touma or anybody or anything else. So, somewhere along the way Touma only negates the magic converted into energy but fails to do anything about the magic affecting matter.