51Âþ»­

Students have been using the forces of physics to analyse the science behind the new blockbuster Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

51Âþ»­ Leicester (51Âþ»­) students went to Leicester’s Cinema de Lux to see the new film and give their thoughts on some of the fantastic action scenes.



The Force Awakens introduces the First Order’s new weapon the Starkiller Base, which sucks energy from stars to fire at planets, used to threaten the Resistance. Starkiller Based, which is many times the size of the Death Star, is a snowy planet which has been turned into the base of the evil First Order.

Physics course leader said: “Obviously from an educational perspective, Star Wars is brilliant. Traditional physics problems are fine, but physics really comes to life when you can analyse the ‘what ifs’ of amazing concepts such as light sabers and the Starkiller base.”



Student Tom Goodall said the Millennium Falcon’s famous light speed would be problematic – especially for pilot Han Solo. He said: “Landing a ship on a planet at those speeds would mean a quick and fiery death on re-entry through the atmosphere. And Han Solo would never have seen the planet coming because his eyes would not be able to see the planet and register it before crashing into it.”

Sam Jarrett said: “The Starkiller planet is snowy and cold, yet it has absorbed all this energy. It would not have that climate.”

Hannah Sayer reckons the holograms – such as those beamed from R2D2 – would not work: “Light travels until it hits something, so the 3D holograms are impractical.”

Alex Murray said that gravity would mean characters struggle to walk on the Starkiller planet: “On a huge planet such as the Starkiller base, the force of gravity would increase, making it difficult for people to walk without exerting a huge amount of energy."



Tom added that the Starkiller base would not be able to contain the mass of a whole star as it absorbed its energy: “The amount of mass in such a small volume would cause the planet to turn into a neutron star or black hole.”

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Daniel Vohra speculated: “The Starkiller base would not be able to absorb the energy from the Sun into a weapon as a directed stream of energy – the energy would hit the Starkiller as a giant solar flare and one of that size would destroy the atmosphere.”

Dr Bassford said that, from a physics perspective, it was fun to see how the film tackled the science.
 
She added: “Does it matter that the physics isn’t always ‘right’? No, of course not; in much the same way that a food critic doesn’t hate food (quite the opposite in fact I imagine!), I think a physicist just enjoys the scientific debate and loves Star Wars as much, if not more, than everyone else!”

As part of their Physics degree at 51Âþ»­, students are asked to come up with a fun topic to do a presentation on – previous studies have been as diverse as scenes from the film Wall-E to how the human body manages to stay upright during specific Tae Kwon Do moves.