Postby InfinityOrNone » Fri Oct 26, 2012 10:44 pm UTC
Hey, I just rewatched the movies, and (regarding Yoda being the most efficient power source) Randall didn't just make a small mistake, he got it wrong on an entire order of magnitude. In the movie Empire Strikes Back, we see the single most powerful display of force power in the original trilogy. No, not Yoda levitating the X-Wing (as Randall claimed) or anything so spectacular. Instead, it's something far, far more humble: Vader choking the life out of Admiral Ozzel.
When we first see this, it is a rather subtle display (or at least as subtle as choking a man to death can be) until you realize something: Vader and Ozzel are on two entirely different ships. Ignoring the fact that Lucas Arts' prop team failed science (according to trigonometry, the farthest Star Destroyers are less than a mile apart), the two ships would have to be miles apart. Thousands of miles apart, in fact. Using that, we're able to figure out a few things about the force used by, well, the Force.
First is the amount of force exerted on Ozzel's neck. For simplicity's sake, we're going to assume the maximum amount used in gripping an object, about 112 pounds of force, or 224 pounds if using two hands. Assuming his neck is the same size as mine (5.5 inches tall, 15 around) that makes 6.875 square feet, leaving us with a force of 32.6 (reduced) foot-pounds.
Now comes the amazing part: the distance. For this, we’re going to have to assume that the Force works like most real-world forces and not anything screwy like entanglement or what-have-you, and we’ll apply one of the great laws of physics: that the intensity of a force between two objects is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them, better known as the Inverse Square Law. Now, let’s assume, for some ludicrous reason, that Vader and Ozzel are only 500 miles away. Not really a realistic distance, but one that’ll work nonetheless. Now, I know this is bad physics, but I’ll give that our previous force of 32.6 foot-pounds is for a distance of an inch, if only because I’m too lazy to figure out the math I’d actually need for this. Anyway, with these horrific assumptions entered, we can figure out how much force Vader actually exerted to murder Ozzel. All we have to do is solve the following equation:
32.6 foot-pounds (18480 inch-pounds)/x=500 miles (31680000 inches)^2/1 inch^2
Now, I might have failed math more than once, but if I did this right it equals 585446400000 inch-pounds, or 48787200000 foot-pounds, or (more importantly) 793758736906.0041 joules. This… is a ridiculous amount of force, and was sustained for a full three seconds, resulting in 16262400000, over 162 gigawatts watts, or far, far, far more power than Yoda used. Forget going green, I’m going with Vader-power!