What if you replaced swords with lightsabers?

[academe]

Fencing scenes in movies - swords + lightsabers = Something for everyone

Check out the internet kinda thingy* here.

*where they take one thing and stick it together with another that I'm sure there is a hip Webby term for, but don't want Gav hating me for using...

[Gav]

Fencing scenes in movies - swords + lightsabers = Something for everyone

Check out the mash-ups here.

You've used that horrid word amalgam "mash-up". I hate you.

[Got_Fenced_In]

My favorite was Indi xD

[erooMynohtnA]

If it were a lightsaber, the guy would have used it to block the bullet.

I thought the Princess Bride was the best.

[bigdawg2121]

They all would have died b/c none of them had the force or the ability to do the thousands of calculations per second required to not kill yourself with the damnable things. There's not weight or tactile feedback, someone would decapitate themself or lop off a limb etc. Geez...I knew that and I don'te even the whole nerd thing.

[telkanuru]

Geez...I knew that and I don'te even the whole nerd thing.

Obviously you do.

Subtle, the dark side is.

[Pescados666]

They all would have died b/c none of them had the force or the ability to do the thousands of calculations per second required to not kill yourself with the damnable things. There's not weight or tactile feedback, someone would decapitate themself or lop off a limb etc. Geez...I knew that and I don'te even the whole nerd thing.

Isn't it basicly the same with a real rapier?

[bigdawg2121]

I mean...think of it this way: hold onto like a 5lbs dumbell. Now wave it about like you planned on fighting someone. Now try to do some cool ish that makes you think you're a super cool futuristic sword fighter. Now stop and think about all of the body parts you severed and sliced and how much worse it would have been if you had been going full speed in a real battle with adrenaline flowing.

A real rapier absolutely has tactile feedback (or should) and ideally, it has perfect balance (as opposed to this thing which would have no balance and would slice through you long before you could react to its contact w/ your skin).


I'm not a nerd; I just have to hang out with some by virtue of (the US Fencing) association.

[Pescados666]

I mean...think of it this way: hold onto like a 5lbs dumbell. Now wave it about like you planned on fighting someone. Now try to do some cool ish that makes you think you're a super cool futuristic sword fighter. Now stop and think about all of the body parts you severed and sliced and how much worse it would have been if you had been going full speed in a real battle with adrenaline flowing.

A real rapier absolutely has tactile feedback (or should) and ideally, it has perfect balance (as opposed to this thing which would have no balance and would slice through you long before you could react to its contact w/ your skin).


I'm not a nerd; I just have to hang out with some by virtue of (the US Fencing) association.

I'd imagine that a lightsaber would have some feedback to it. It doesn make sense to use a weapon that isn't balanced right.

[chefencer]

I'd imagine that a lightsaber would have some feedback to it. It doesn make sense to use a weapon that isn't balanced right.

Since we're dancing on the heads of pins...I'll bite. If your lightsaber is plasma that is somehow encapsulated, the 'blade' would have no mass - like waving a flashlight around. It would be difficult to balance the handle against nothing. I have to agree with Bdawg that handling such a thing would be similar to, oh I don't know, podracing? I think imagining the lack of control a beginner fencer has and then making their blade able to cut through just about anything is probably a useful thought experiment.

Haha! I haven't had this sort of conversation in a loooong time...

[Musicfencer]

But it shouldnt be denied that having a lightsaber would kick...butt.

[academe]

Haha! I haven't had this sort of conversation in a loooong time...

In a galaxy far, far, away...

[Musicfencer]

0_0
o_0

[Nolano]

Lightsabers have a gyroscopic field that actually makes them slightly difficult to swing.

Yes, I'm a nerd.

[chefencer]

Lightsabers have a gyroscopic field that actually makes them slightly difficult to swing.

Yes, I'm a nerd.

Hahaha! I can't wait to spring the phrase "gyroscopic field" on the next physicist I come in contact with. That's a pretty cool concept, but it boggles me a little. What's gyrating - gravitons?

[Got_Fenced_In]

If it were a lightsaber, the guy would have used it to block the bullet.

I thought the Princess Bride was the best.

...Not if he's stupid.

[academe]

Hahaha! I can't wait to spring the phrase "gyroscopic field" on the next physicist I come in contact with. That's a pretty cool concept, but it boggles me a little. What's gyrating - gravitons?

Yes, I was at a cocktail party the other night and was talking to a woman about how the geometry of gyroscopic systems with symmetry, utilizing an intrinsic Lagrangian viewpoint could have practical applications. She concurred that naturally unstable mechanical systems with exogenous forces could be transformed into more stable equivalents with gyroscopic systems if the forces were determined by a suitable class of feedback stimuli (e.g. lightsaber usage in synchronicity with metichlorians in highly trained Jedi Knights).

She evidently had done some research to assess the stability of relative equilibria in similar feedback systems, and extended the energy-momentum block-diagonalization theorem of Simo, Lewis, Posbergh, and Marsden to gyroscopic systems with absolute symmetry. She thought the use of two coupled rigid bodies with internal rotors to facilitate balance in a lightsaber was a fairly simple construct. She had done some energy-momentum back-of-napkin calculations that supported a method that would yield computationally tractable stability criteria in lightsabers as well as for other, more esoteric, examples.

I was so interested in checking her math that I forgot to get her phone number.

[Stormbringer]

While poking around the Star Wars wiki (after reading up on the lightsabre), I found that there are canonical references to a smaller, weaker derivative weapon known as a "lightfoil".

Now, all they need is a light-épée...

[Pescados666]

I wonder if it's possible to fit a pistol grip onto a lightsaber/foil...

[telkanuru]

I never understood why everone didn't just attack their oppoenent's hilt/hands...