Once you assume of Star Wars, you consider lightsabers. Proper? What may very well be higher, from a movie-making standpoint, than a futuristic sword that permits you to create superior fencing duels like in old-time Errol Flynn swashbucklers. (So significantly better than watching Stormtroopers fireplace their blasters into partitions and ceilings and anything besides their targets.)
Lightsabers are available a cosmic rainbow of hues (color-coded blue or inexperienced for good guys, pink for dangerous) and quite a lot of shapes. There’s even a double-bladed model in Phantom Menace. (I don’t need to begin a nerd struggle—but—however the perfect lightsaber battle within the canon needs to 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? In fact, they aren’t actual, so no one actually is aware of how they work. Even the characters within the motion pictures 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 seek advice from it as a laser sword—although I believe Luke was being sarcastic.
Anyway, that’s simply improper: It may possibly’t be a laser. For starters, lasers beams are invisible from the aspect, 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 move by way of one another while you attempt to parry.
However what’s it then? We are able to significantly slim the chances by asking if the blade has mass. If it’s some form of mild (as you’d assume from the identify “lightsaber”), then the reply is not any—mild, or electromagnetic radiation, has no mass. If we are able to decide that it has mass, then it’s not mild.
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 pressure performing 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 an alternative 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 legislation of movement. This says the acceleration (a) of an object will depend on its mass (m) and the quantity of pressure (F) utilized to it.
