If you suppose of Star Wars, you consider lightsabers. Proper? What may very well 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 significantly 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, crimson for unhealthy) and a wide range of shapes. There’s even a double-bladed model in Phantom Menace. (I don’t need to begin a nerd battle—but—however one of the best lightsaber battle within the canon must be the “Duel of the Fates” in that film, because of 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 motion pictures appear just a little 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 think Luke was being sarcastic.
Anyway, that’s simply unsuitable: It could possibly’t be a laser. For starters, lasers beams are invisible from the facet, so that you wouldn’t see a factor except you staged the duels in a disco with fog machines to scatter the beams. Second, the beams go on eternally; they don’t have an finish. Third, laser beams can’t clank collectively like swords—they’d simply go by means of one another while you attempt to parry.
However what’s it then? We are able to drastically slender the chances by asking if the blade has mass. If it’s some type of gentle (as you’d suppose from the title “lightsaber”), then the reply isn’t any—gentle, or electromagnetic radiation, has no mass. If we will decide that it has mass, then it’s not gentle.
It is 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 drive appearing on an object. Right here we need to see what influence 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 now we have a “lightball” manufactured from the identical buzzy substance. Because it’s symmetrical, we will 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 is determined by its mass (m) and the quantity of drive (F) utilized to it.
