Analysis Of Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Using physics, we can calculate the mass of a bolt fired from a blaster used in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. First of all, we know that these bolts are not lasers based on two facts: they can be seen from the side and they do not travel at the speed of light. Thus, from there, we have to find their velocity. Rhett Allain calculated that to be about 35 m/s. He did this by finding distance and time of various bolts fired throughout the series, dividing the two measurements, and averaging out all the quotients. In other words, he used the formula average velocity is equal to distance divided by time. Now that we have the bolt’s velocity, let us take a look at the scene on Takodana. There, Han Solo used a blaster to shoot a stormtrooper. According to Isaac Newton’s …show more content…
This means that Fnet is equal to the change in momentum over the change in time and that momentum is equal to mass multiplied by velocity. From this information, we can derive the formula for the conservation principle: m1v1i+m2v2i=m1v1f+m2v2f. Also, we can say that the collision was inelastic because we can assume the bolt stuck to the stormtrooper and did not instead bounce off of him. We can also assume that the trooper started at rest, making his initial velocity zero. This shortens the formula down to m1v1i=(m1+m2)v2f, with m1 referring to the bolt and m2 referring to the stormtrooper. Now all we have to find is the recoiling speed and the mass of the stormtrooper. To find the recoiling speed, Allain used the average velocity formula, estimating the time the trooper was in the air for and the horizontal distance traveled. He found it to be about 2.0 m/s to 2.8 m/s. For the mass of the stormtrooper, he rounded it to 75 kg based on the fact that the trooper is an adult male. Plugging both of the values in with the aforementioned estimated velocity of the bolt, you would get a bolt mass of 4.5 kg to 6.5