flights of fancy

[cellio]

"Existentially speaking, is there such a thing as half a piece of cake?" -- kayre

This evening at dinner the fundamental dynamics of lightsabres came up. Specifically, how does the color encoding work? Is Luke's blue because Luke prefers blue, or because any lightsabre Luke uses will channel Luke-specific force, which is blue? If so, do the admission criteria at Jedi University include "sabre does not glow red" (and if not, why not)? Are there important qualitative difference between blue and green sabres, both of which appear to channel the light side of the force? Surely these are important research topics for someone out there who has, you know, seen all the movies.

Comments

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

It has to do with crystal alignment. Crystal alignment depends on personal philosophy of the maker. So...

(They kind of sort of cover this in one of the Zahn books, IIRC.)

lightsabres

[psu-jedi.livejournal.com]

What I know I know because I did my 11th grade chemistry paper on the SPFX of Star Wars, and how things would work if they were for real. And since that was, um, 20 years ago (holy crap!), and we all know how Lucas likes to play with his own universe, it's possible that this information is completely out of date.

BUT,

lightsabres are built by each Jedi, essentially they have to get their "sabre badge" as part of their trials. Sabre color is dependant on what kind of crystal is used as the main componant of the hilt, or the thing that garners the energy. In extended universe (so I guess this stuff is kinda up to date), Jedi could be drawn to the crystal that they used to make their sabres (if memory serves, we see this in Vol 1 of Clone Wars which was on the Cartoon Network). If that's the case, then it would make sense that Sith are drawn to those crystals that make a red glow, and that Jedi are drawn to those that make blue/green/purple, etc. Of course, we didn't see the purple sabre until EPI. Luke's first sabre was Anakin's, which Obi Wan somehow has(we haven't exactly seen how Obi Wan gets it, but I'm hoping we learn this in EPIII). It was blue. That was lost when Vader chopped Luke's hand at the end of ESB. Luke shows up with a new, GREEN, sabre in ROTJ. Again in extended universe, there's a book called "Shadow of the Empire" that came out in '96 or something like that, that is set in the 3-month time preiod between ESB and ROTJ. There's a chapter about how Luke returns to Ben's hut and constructs his new sabre. I only read the book once because, well, it pretty much sucked (it wasn't written by Tim Zahn, god of Star Wars EU!), but I do recall that.

There's also talk (can't remember from where/who) that each color does have a different strength to it, but I can't really talk to that. What I learned when I wrote my paper was that a laser sword is pretty much fantasy. A laser doesn't end after a meter, and for swords to "cancel" each other (i.e., hit), they'd have to be of the same color.

For those of you out there with a science background, feel free to correct me on that. The only reason I passed chem that year was because I wrote 2000 words for the paper when all we were supposed to write was 1500. 50 points extra credit pushed me to a "B" in the class, even though I pretty much failed my final. I hated chem. I loved movies (and still do!). So, yeah.

This is probably more than you wanted. And I'm not sure if it even answered your question. But it's what I could come up without having to delve into source material (ahhh! Actual research! Ahh! ;-)

[goldsquare.livejournal.com]

Monica? It's so you can tell them apart on screen.

:-) :-) :-)

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

Is it too dull to say that Samuel J's is purple because he asked for it to be purple? Which I think is rather cool, personally :)

[grouchyoldcoot.livejournal.com]

If you had a meter-long, extremely strong fiber of some material which was extremely transparent to light of a particular wavelength, you could set up a very intense standing wave inside the fiber. The photon pressure would hold the fiber rigid, and the evanescent wave (basically leakage) would carry some energy outside the fiber. If something like air entered the evanescent wave you'd get scattered photons. If something denser, like a slow jedi, got close enough to interact with the evanescent wave, it would get very hot very fast.

That's my favorite light saber theory. It's only 90% physically impossible, rather than the traditional 100%.

[akitrom.livejournal.com]

By the way, there are two such things as half-a-piece of cake.

One requires the other half to still be attached. "There's still a couple of letters in the icing on the right half of this piece of cake."

The other definition is temporary and locally defined. (All language is locally defined. All language is jargon.) If you've cut a cake into pieces of a certain size, then the temporary, local definition of "piece of cake" includes both the type of cake (chocolate, or what have you) and the size of the piece. "I only want half a piece of cake" uses this local, temporary definition, as a short-cut for the more lumbrous "I only want a piece of cake half the size of the one's you've already cut for people."

The more important question is whether people in your part of the country "ice" a cake or "frost" a cake with the thick chocolate liquid sealant.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

This doesn't answer your question, but it amused me: http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/lightsaber.htm