STAR WARS lV: A NEW HOPE PHYSICS MISTAKES Description of Scene This scene takes place in Star Wars:

A New Hope the first installation of the Star Wars franchise. Luke Skywalker attacks the Death Star along with other Rebel Alliance Pilots and uses the force to hit a vulnerable air vent on the surface of the Death Star. This causes a series of chain reactions that work its way down to the core of the Death Star. As Luke and his cohorts like R2D2, C3PO, Han Solo, Chewbacca and Princess Leia fly away from the Death Star in the Millennium Falcon, their spacecraft, the Death Star blows up in the background and you can hear and see the explosion at the same time, which goes against the laws of physics, especially the laws involving wave and sounds. Analysis and observations One of the major waves and sounds errors in Star Wars is that you can hear laser-fire and explosions during the battle scenes in space, where it should be impossible to hear sounds. It is impossible to hear sounds in space because of the electromagnetic spectrum. Waves on the electromagnetic spectrum, such as radio waves, heat waves and light waves, dont need a medium for them to move which allows these types of waves to travel from the Sun to the Earth. Sound on the other hand, is not on the electromagnetic spectrum and requires a medium to move through, and since space is a vacuum and there is no medium, sound will not be heard in space. Since sound being heard in space is a major flaw and takes place throughout the movie I have decided to ignore this flaw and its implication on other waves and sounds errors. Also, I assumed that space has the same density as air. I chose air as the medium for three reasons. The first reason was that it will make the calculations for speed of sound in air easier to conduct, air is one of the most neutral mediums there are, and the time it take is comparable to

Earth, since Earths medium is air. Another issue I will be neglecting is air resistance. With air resistance taken into account, regular sound waves, for the most part, would have dissipated over the fifty kilometers it would have to travel to reach the Millennium Falcon. I did not include air resistance in my calculations to make the calculations easier and the fact that throughout the physics course we always neglected air resistance. The physics mistake in Star Wars: A New Hope I chose to focus on was the mistake mentioned in the first paragraph, when Luke blows up the Death Star. Just to recap, as Luke flies away in the Millennium Falcon, you can see the Death Star blow up behind him, at the exact same time you also hear the explosion. This is impossible because light travels faster than sound, and due to this, you should see the explosion before you hear it, especially at long distances where the distances between light waves and sound waves increases. The whole point of this calculation and report is to find how long it should take the sound waves to hit the Millennium Falcon if the rules of waves and sounds are applied. To find how long it should take the sound waves to hit the Millennium Falcon we will have to find the time and to find time with our calculations we will have to use the variable distance. After reviewing the scene where Luke Skywalker blows up the Death Star I estimate that the Millennium Falcon was at least 10 kilometers away if not more. I estimated this because the Death Star is supposedly one-hundred and sixty kilometers in diameter and since you can see the entire Death Star in the frame they must be fairly far away1. Furthermore, even if the fifty kilometers is too small of a distance inaccurate we can still get a minimal time for the sound waves to reach the Death Star, still proving the physics in Star Wars: A New Hope was incorrect. Another variable we had to account for to do the calculations was the temperature in space. In our part of the
1 "Death Star." Wikia. Wikia, n.d. Web. 14 Jan 2014. <http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Death_Star

galaxy the temperature is around 3 . I used this temperature because accurate readings of temperatures in other parts of space have not been conducted. Lastly, in regards to assumptions made in the movie I pretend that the Millennium Falcon has stopped where we see it in the frame, fifty kilometers away, even though we know it continues to move. I did this so we could gather a time of how long it would take to travel the distance we see the Millennium Falcon and if it had continued to stay on that shot how much later would we hear the sound of the explosion. Note: To conduct this experiment we will have to assume sound can be heard in space, another reason why I ignored that error. Calculations and Discussion The first step to figure out how long it would take the sound waves to travel the fifty kilometer distance is to find the speed of the sound waves in the given medium, which is air. To find the speed of sound in air you can use the equation below. The 331.6 is the constant while you multiply the 0.0606 by (T), which is the temperature in , to get how fast the speed of sound is in meters per second. The lower the temperature the slower the sound waves move. As stated below the average temperature for space is 3 . Therefore the equation and what the speed of the sound in space is, looks like this;

Givens

Based on this calculation we know that in space the sound waves will travel at 333.4 meters per second. Now that we know the distance (fifty kilometers) and the speed of the sound waves (333.4 m/s) we can find the time it takes the sound waves to reach the Millennium Falcon. The equation we use is below;

Rearranged for time;

To get the time in seconds we have to divide meters/second by meters, so instead of fifty kilometers we will be using fiftythousand meters. Below is the calculation for time; Givens

Time= 150 seconds Time =2.5 minutes

This calculation shows that the sound waves should be heard 150 seconds or 2.5 minutes after the explosion occurs Calculation, Analysis and Evaluation Based on the results from the calculations it was proved that it would take the sound waves from the explosion of the Death Star should have taken 150.0 seconds, or 2.5 minutes to reach the Millennium Falcon instead of the instantaneous sound and explosion you see if the scene in a galaxy like ours, where the temperature is 3 . This proves that the physics that was shown in Star Wars: A New Hope was incorrect. To make the physics correct, or at least less incorrect, George Lucas, the director could have had the explosion occur and then a few seconds later you would hear the explosion and even though a few second delay is not completely correct, it would show that they at least acknowledged the rules of physics. Another option would have had the Millennium Falcon stop wait for another ship at a certain distance. If you did this you could have the Death Star in the background and have it blow up, and as the scene continues you start to hear the sounds of the explosion. If the scene continued for 2.5 minutes it would have been correct. Even though the scene was not correct it was still Interesting. The battle scenes before hand, plus the hatred you build up to it throughout the movie makes you glad when it is destroyed. The destruction of the Death Star, though not correct in its physics, was still an exciting and effective ending for the movie. The sources of error in this calculation are the estimates. I estimated the Millennium Falcon was 50 kilometers away from the Death Star. This is an estimate and potentially this could be way off, either too large or too small. This could lead to an incorrect time answer in later calculations. Fortunately even though it was an estimate, and may be inaccurate it still proves improper

physics. Another estimate is the 3 tempature. This temperature is in our galaxy but if this fictional galaxy is warmer than ours the sound waves would move faster, making my time incorrect. Lastly, a source of error could be the calculations themselves. The calculations could be wrong even though they have been double checked by numerous sources; this is the biggest error since it is an error involving the calculations and not estimates involving scenes, which are objective. A movie that shows the basic concepts of sound and light waves is Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In this movie Indiana Jones makes his way to a town that is set up for a nuclear bomb test. Not knowing that this is what the town was set up for he is completely unprepared when the countdown starts. He hides in a lead lined fridge as the countdown reaches zero. Through the window in the kitchen the sky turns completely white and then you hear the noise of the explosion. This shows that the producers understand that light travels faster than sound and you should see the light first.