Why Do We Have Lasers, But Not 'Star Wars'-Style Lightsabers?

VisibleGreen said:

Doesn't the electron have no size? If so wouldn't it be true that theoretically we could harness a virtually infinite amount of electricity in a finite space?

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Technically the electron does have mass therefore size but it is pretty small. electron mass = 9.10938356 × 10-31 kilograms. That's a lot of decimal places! Was it Tesla who envisioned having an energy 'grid' that encircled the earth that could be tapped (wirelessly beamed down) whenever needed?

BTW - Your new alien avatar kind of looks like the ones on When Mars Attacks.

Laser Chick said:

If they have, then they have sold out to the oil companies.

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They offer money first and then threaten your life and everyone you care about if you don't first accept :scared:
Or at least the stories say.

OVNI said:

Technically the electron does have mass therefore size but it is pretty small. electron mass = 9.10938356 × 10-31 kilograms. That's a lot of decimal places! Was it Tesla who envisioned having an energy 'grid' that encircled the earth that could be tapped (wirelessly beamed down) whenever needed?

BTW - Your new alien avatar kind of looks like the ones on When Mars Attacks.

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Oh that? haha I had that up awhile ago but it freaked people out
Yep that's exactly what it's from. Mars Attacks.

Yeah that was tesla. He must have scared quite a few people in his time.
So how much energy do you think could be stored in a typical AA battery then?

VG I like your avatar much better than the one you have been using.

We will eventually solve the problem with batteries or with super capacitors with some new technology. Yes we will eventually have these:


And our laptops and tablets will be replaced with computer sheets that you can fold up and put in your pocket:


Alan

I thought about this early this morning. Oil will be diminishing in the next 50 years to smaller pockets which will be more expensive to obtain = skyrocketing price per gallon. There are some plants that are literally weeds that can be grow in waste lands that can be farmed for the oil they produce but the output will be small and not support present demands.
IMHO my thoughts went to Tesla, wireless electric transmission.
Of course we would have to see if the transmission would not cause long term harm such as some suspect happens around present day high power transmission lines.
Imagine the possibilities, cars, buses trains, chainsaws, lawnmowers and so on all being tapped into the grid wherever and whenever you need power.
Just a thought, wonder if electrical storms or solar flares would bother it?

BTW: a lightsaber of epic proportions!!
http://www.weather.com/news/weather/video/nasa-shares-photo-of-newborn-star-from-hubble-telescope

Pi R Squared said:

... solve the problem with batteries or with super capacitors with some new technology ... Alan

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One of my previous projects, an alarm clock that slowly brings up a lamp before the buzzer goes off, has a couple coin cell batteries as backup for power outages. They need replacing every 6 months or so. But you have to get a screwdriver, open it up, pop it out (with another smaller screwdriver), etc. My wife asked me if I can make one w/o a battery since she would not want to tackle replacing one - she travelled for a living so I wouldn't necessarily be there to help her out. I'm like :wtf:

So I hit the internet again and found super caps. Re-designed it to take either coin cells or super caps (not both) and would last on a commercially available supercap for 48-hours. That should be enough to not miss the alarm and get the power back on. With super caps, it recharges in seconds. So hers never needs to be opened or the time reset due to a power outage as long as it doesn't exceed 2 days.

Yes, technology keeps giving us more things to use to solve our problems. It would be useful to see super caps with higher and higher voltages (the one I used is 5V which was at the high-end of technology).

Pi R Squared said:

VG I like your avatar much better than the one you have been using.

We will eventually solve the problem with batteries or with super capacitors with some new technology. Yes we will eventually have these:

And our laptops and tablets will be replaced with computer sheets that you can fold up and put in your pocket:

Alan

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To bad we can't have the awesome phaser sound though.

Check this out

OVNI said:

One of my previous projects, an alarm clock that slowly brings up a lamp before the buzzer goes off, has a couple coin cell batteries as backup for power outages. They need replacing every 6 months or so.

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That's just bad product design really.

If you want something to run for a long time on low power you can build it. The average digital watch proves that point by running well over a year from a single coin cell.

In case of an alarm clock you'll probably consider the battery as an emergency backup thatis not normally used. You would design the product such that it runs off a battery for a day or two if mains power fails, which is fine when it's plugged in 24/7. If you decide to use it as a travel alarm clock that idea doesn't work so well anymore.

Benm said:

That's just bad product design really.

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Well it was pretty good for what was available in ~2000 for a hobby project and the capability of a PIC16F84A.

But one year later 9/11 happened and you couldn't get it through security anymore, airport/flight-crew lingo called it an SD or suspect device. So it became a 24/7 bedside alarm clock.

So out of two ways to meet a requirement, I ended up going with the 2nd, change the reqt.

OVNI said:

I'd like a lightsaber that when you turn it off, the beam disappears starting from the top and moves down to the host, like in the movies, please. :wave:

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See my Signature.

Trendkilla254 said:

See my Signature.

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Nice work :gj:

Hard to tell from the video, does the light only go up to the ball and retract when the ball drops?

OVNI said:

Well it was pretty good for what was available in ~2000 for a hobby project and the capability of a PIC16F84A.

But one year later 9/11 happened and you couldn't get it through security anymore, airport/flight-crew lingo called it an SD or suspect device. So it became a 24/7 bedside alarm clock.

So out of two ways to meet a requirement, I ended up going with the 2nd, change the reqt.

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I guess any home built clock turned instantly into a bomb timer that day, regardless if any explosives were attached to it

I guess most designs for mains powered alarm clocks with battery backups are not intended for travel. The battery is there in case mains fails, but normally not used. I remeber having this LED display alarm clock, perhaps 20 years ago, which had a 9v alkaline as a backup. When mains failed the battery would keep time and sound the alarm buzzer, but the display would go out whenever it was unplugged.

Supercaps may be a solution for something that is frequenty without mains power. They will not last as long as coin cells per volume/weight, but recharge when plugged back in.

For a lightsabre-like appliance you need both - energy AND power density. At the moment there is no easy fix for this. I guess the best feasible energy density is in lithium polymer battery packs intend for drones and such, but even those cannot discharge most of their energy safely in, say, 1 minute.

what about a DPSS with an external resonant cavity that ends with a mirror at the end of a rod, so you could cut through things with the energy being reflected back and forth!

micheal rosen said:

what about a DPSS with an external resonant cavity that ends with a mirror at the end of a rod, so you could cut through things with the energy being reflected back and forth!

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I was thinking of something similar, using a one way (or two way is it? where lights goes through one side, but reflects on the other) mirror on top of the aperture and another mirror xx cm's away aligned as perfect as possible, thus making the beam x number of times more powerful than it would be with just one beam. I know divergence would eventually kill the beam and shoot it out but if you had a decent amount of beams captured in the said device, it should be fairly strong.

LOL, scratch that, I didn't think about if something were to pass through it and it would stop all beams except for the one main beam, just a slight design flaw.

Ricker said:

I was thinking of something similar, using a one way (or two way is it? where lights goes through one side, but reflects on the other) mirror on top of the aperture and another mirror xx cm's away aligned as perfect as possible, thus making the beam x number of times more powerful than it would be with just one beam. I know divergence would eventually kill the beam and shoot it out but if you had a decent amount of beams captured in the said device, it should be fairly strong.

LOL, scratch that, I didn't think about if something were to pass through it and it would stop all beams except for the one main beam, just a slight design flaw.

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well, in the resonant cavities of high power DPSS lasers, you easily have KW of power, and that would chew through something instantly. maybe even fast enough to have itself sustained, if the system were q-switched too.

EDIT: 400th post, WOOO!!!

micheal rosen said:

well, in the resonant cavities of high power DPSS lasers, you easily have KW of power, and that would chew through something instantly. maybe even fast enough to have itself sustained, if the system were q-switched too.

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Oh wow, I didn't even realize one could achieve that much power with those. My rookie knowledge of laser technology is not applicable in this theory.

micheal rosen said:

what about a DPSS with an external resonant cavity that ends with a mirror at the end of a rod, so you could cut through things with the energy being reflected back and forth!

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The second something passes in front of the beam lasing action will cease. So you would get a quick "pulse" that uses all of energy currently resonating within the cavity and then it would would stop all together.