While you suppose of Star Wars, you consider lightsabers. Proper? What might be higher, from a movie-making standpoint, than a futuristic sword that allows you to create superior fencing duels like in old-time Errol Flynn swashbucklers. (So a lot better than watching Stormtroopers hearth their blasters into partitions and ceilings and the rest besides their targets.)
Lightsabers are available a cosmic rainbow of hues (color-coded blue or inexperienced for good guys, purple for dangerous) and a wide range of shapes. There’s even a double-bladed model in Phantom Menace. (I don’t need to begin a nerd combat—but—however the very best lightsaber battle within the canon needs to be the “Duel of the Fates” in that film, due to the talents and scariness of Darth Maul actor Ray Park.)
So … precisely what are lightsabers? After all, they aren’t actual, so no one actually is aware of how they work. Even the characters within the films appear a bit confused about it. In Phantom Menace, Anakin calls it a “laser sword.” Yeah, he was a child, however each Din Djarin (the Mandalorian) and Luke Skywalker additionally discuss with it as a laser sword—although I believe Luke was being sarcastic.
Anyway, that’s simply fallacious: It could possibly’t be a laser. For starters, lasers beams are invisible from the facet, so that you wouldn’t see a factor until you staged the duels in a disco with fog machines to scatter the beams. Second, the beams go on ceaselessly; they don’t have an finish. Third, laser beams can’t clank collectively like swords—they’d simply move by means of one another while you attempt to parry.
However what’s it then? We are able to tremendously slender the chances by asking if the blade has mass. If it’s some sort of gentle (as you’d suppose from the identify “lightsaber”), then the reply isn’t any—gentle, or electromagnetic radiation, has no mass. If we are able to decide that it has mass, then it’s not gentle.
This can be a query we can reply, by analyzing how lightsabers transfer while you wave them round. In different phrases, it’s time for some physics!
Mass and Movement
Don’t confuse mass and weight. Mass is a measure of how a lot “stuff” like protons, neutrons, and electrons are in an object, and weight is the quantity of gravitational power appearing on an object. Right here we need to see what impression the mass of a lightsaber would have on its movement. However let’s begin with one thing easier.
As a substitute of a lightsaber, say we’ve got a “lightball” product of the identical buzzy substance. Because it’s symmetrical, we are able to describe its movement with out worrying about rotation. If we need to transfer this ball backwards and forwards, we name on Newton’s second regulation of movement. This says the acceleration (a) of an object depends upon its mass (m) and the quantity of power (F) utilized to it.
