Alyssa Hawras – aoh5295 Sam Fisher – sef5176 Julia Sickels – jns5224

What are we “debunking”? If you’ve ever seen Star Wars, you know that it takes place in a galaxy far, far away. During the movie, there are several scenes in space where there are sounds being produced by characters and ships. From what we have learned in class, this would be impossible for sound to be produced in space. So where are these sounds coming from?! How is it possible to dodge the speed of light shooting from the laser guns?

How Sound Travels Sound waves need to travel through a medium that conducts sound, such as air, liquid, or a solid. In a vacuum, aka space, there is no medium for sound to travel. Sound relies on the vibration of atoms in either air, water, or a solid. In a vacuum there are no atoms to vibrate so sound cannot travel.

How does this relate to class? Do you remember this experiment? – When turning on a bell in a container the sound is clearly heard. As the air is being sucked out of the container the sound of the bell becomes dimmer and dimmer. Once the container is turned into a complete vacuum there is no sound coming from the bell. – This experiment shows how sound waves need a medium to travel through, and what happens when that medium is taken away.

Battle Scene This video shows explosions and sounds that are in space: – ilpage&v=HZXcWV0S7fo#t=84s ilpage&v=HZXcWV0S7fo#t=84s – In this clip every explosion noise, sound from R2D2, and other noises would normally be inaudible. Anything that Aniken says would be heard because he is in air. In order to make the movie more exciting Star Wars adds noise to where there normally would not be, especially since on Earth most people would assume that explosions come with loud noises.

Speed of Light In several scenes in Star Wars, you see the main characters dodging “bullets” of light shooting from storm trooper guns. In order to move fast enough to dodge the laser you would have to move faster than the light moves throughout the medium. In this case it would mean that you would need to move faster than the speed of light, which is impossible for a human. The speed of light is 3 x 10 8 m/s The fastest speed of a human on foot ever recorded is 27 mph, or about 12 m/s.

Battle Scene 2 er_detailpage&v=JA_USN_g3n8#t=25s er_detailpage&v=JA_USN_g3n8#t=25s In this scene, Luke and Leia are trying to escape the Death Star. Storm Troopers are shooting lasers at them, which they are dodging. From studying the speed of light in class, we can see that this would be impossible.

Sources 514running.html 514running.html