i thought about making a lightsabre using electromagnetic fields that contained a plasma. that would be a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands and could cause self-inflicting wounds to the inexperienced sabre dualer.
So...
I thought of making a non-lethal version for the trainees to start with. i know there are always the good old fasioned stick to hit people with, but make it a little easier on the body for younger and older folks. this could be fun, so listen up.
start with something i made up, suppossedly, called a Cathode LASER Tube. basically it is built like a cathode ray tube, but with low pressure CO2 inside, and mirrors at each end, effectivly forming a different kind of laser. in theory it should project a beam of electrons through a beam of light, it's just a combonation of laser beam and cathode ray, but in this setup the cathode ray will travel inside and through the laser beam and allow it to go through air, unlike the traditional ray which has to be in a vacuum.
well, put that inside the lightsabre casing to form the beam emitter part. now just build a coil that can be squeezed into a cigar shape to form the blade, and you'll have to do more research to find out how to do that, cuz i ain't got all day here, but...
anyway, you could shoot that cathode laser beam into the electromagnetic field, which in theory, SHOULD contain it completely. this would make the the colors of the blade very bright and might even hum some, due to the wave flux of the fields being squeezed into a cigar shape.
now, here's the kicker application now...
we could build a suit for the fighters to wear that has sensors to detecte a direct contact on the body or limbs. this suit could be made to do any number of cool things like vibrate at certain points when hit, but the blades would still repel eachother because they're both negatively charged. this would be AWESOME if it were implimented with low cost....hopefully anyway.
seeya later.
tell me what ya think, thanks-- bifftannon, May 07 2002 A few questions:
Why would your beam of light in the "cathode laser tube" allow a "cathode ray" (stream of electrons) to travel through air any more easily?
If you've got mirrors on each end of the beam emitter, then won't your practisee get hit by the terminating mirror? Or are you planning to allow some laser light shine through this cavity? If so, once again you have the same problem with beam termination.
Also, an electromagnetic "field" (which i'm presuming is what the coil is about) to define the area of the blade would not work. The amount of energy required to contain light in any significant way is pretty huge. Consider black holes.-- yamahito, May 07 2002 hey biff i am interesting in building this lightsabre but could you send me as much info on it as possible. like diagrams,parts list, and where to get a laser cathode ray tube or how to build one
email me at chaha12@aol.com-- beast, May 28 2002 ok folks here we go again.
the beam of light is of the invisible spectrum, so you wouldn't see it with your eyes. this invisible beam is but a medium for the stream of electrons to travel through, it acts as a tube for water to flow in...this is the same way sonic weapons work kinda...except they send a high and low frequency sound wave trhough the beam instead of electrons. well, the thing is built just like a cathode ray tube, but with a lasable gas at low pressure inside, and mirrors at the ends of the tube. as a laser is built, it has a 100% reflective mirror at the back, and a lesser % reflective mirror at the front, this allows the beam to not go backwards through the laser tube, but you already knew that. well that's about it. this beam or stream of electrons will flow out through the mirror at the front inside the laser beam, sorta, it's really hard to get it the first time through...but i'll try to explain better for yas.
the beam is formed inside the tube by appliying high voltage across the two electrodes inside the tube. this excites electrons and some will form photons(light particles) and some will be very energised or excited electrons. the light particles or photons will go through the front mirror and become a laser beam, but the excited electrons that didn't become photons, stuck to this mass of energy and also went through the mirror and traveled through the beam as a medium, these electrons would be negative, duh! they're electrons. they will also be able to be held inside a magnetic field, so ther you have the purpose for the electromagnetic coil. and yes, i think it will work if you take a coil that's wrapped spiral around an iron core or iron tube, then place another coil around that coil, that is wound vertically on an iron tube. that coild would force the inner one to squeeze itself down into a cigar shape...that's your blade shaped field...simple as that.-- bifftannon, Jun 08 2002 Part of the problem is that you've kind of described the early Crookes tubes, which were X-ray generators...Waving around an X-ray source is probably a Bad Thing, and the lead suits would seriously slow down the fight...
I like the idea otherwise, though. Would have problems with the tubes breaking...-- StarChaser, Jun 10 2002 Too complicated. But jedis-in-training surely need a practice sabre.-- eyal, Apr 11 2007 random, halfbakery