When you think from Star Wars you think of lightsabers. Normal? What could be better, from a filmmaking point of view, than a futuristic sword that allows you to engage in incredible fencing duels, like in Errol Flynn’s senior adventurers. (Much better than watching stormtroopers fire blasters at walls and ceilings and everything else but their targets.)
Lightsabers come in a cosmic rainbow of colors (coded blue or green for the good guys, red for the bad guys) and various shapes. There is even a double blade version available Ghostly menace. (I don’t want to start a nerd fight – yet – but the best lightsaber fight in canon is “Duel of fates” in this film, with skill and menace Darth Maul, actor Ray Park.)
So… exactly what If lightsabers? Of course, they’re not real, so no one really knows how they work. Even the characters in the movies seem a little confused by this. IN Ghostly menaceAnakin calls it the “laser sword”. Yes, it was a baby, but both Din Djarin (The Mandalorian) and Luke Skywalker also refer to it as a laser sword – although I suspect Luke was being sarcastic.
Either way, it’s just wrong: it can’t be a laser. First, the laser beams are invisible from the side, so you won’t see anything if you’re not there he organized duels at the disco with fog machines that scatter the rays. Secondly, the rays shine forever; they have no end. Third, laser beams can’t hit each other like swords – they just pass through each other when you try to parry.
But what’s the point then? We can narrow down the possibilities significantly by asking whether the blade has mass. If so Some type of light (as one might assume from the name “lightsaber”), then the answer is no – light, i.e. electromagnetic radiation, has no mass. If we determine that it has mass, then it is not light.
This is the question Power answer by analyzing how your lightsabers move as you swing them. In other words, time for some physics!
Mass and motion
Don’t confuse mass with weight. Mass is a measure of the amount of “stuff” such as protons, neutrons and electrons IN object, and weight is the amount of gravitational force acting ON object. Here we want to see what effect the weight of the lightsaber will have on its movement. But let’s start with something simpler.
Instead of a lightsaber, we have a “lightweight ball” made of the same buzzing substance. Because it is symmetrical, we can describe its motion without worrying about rotation. If we want to move this ball back and forth, we invoke Newton’s second law of motion. This says that the acceleration (AND) of an object depends on its mass (M) and the magnitude of the force (F) was used for this.