The Voice of Inexperience: Death Stars, Electron Orbitals, and Bad Roommates

“Have you ever tried to figure out how much metal was used to construct the Death Star? And then how much said metal would weigh?

~Crazy M”

If I were solely focused on avoiding work, the simple answer to this question would be “no, I have never tried to figure that out.” However in the interests of making this interesting, I will do my best to determine this figure.

To determine the mass of the Death Star we must complete several steps. Firstly, we must look at the Wikipedia article on the Death Star and see if it gives us a straight forward answer since we really don’t want to have to compute this ourselves. Then when we look at this article, and realize that no mass is given, we must work with what we have. That’s right, we must google “mass of the Death Star.”

When no answer becomes readily apparent bitch and groan for a while, then figure out some metrics you could use to help you. For example, the Wikipedia article on the Death Star does give us its radius, which is somewhere between 120 and 160 kilometers. For the rest of the computation, we will assume a radius of 140 kilometers.

Now, since we have no real idea how many stories there are in a Death Star, or how many support columns, we’ll simply have to do some guess work. Let’s say the outer hull of the Death Star is made of a meter thick piece of solid steel. Let us say that there is, on average, a deck in the death star every three meters and that that the decking is 1/2 m thick so…

.5/(3+.5) = 1/7

We now know that 1/7 of the Death Star’s Interior must also be composed of this metal. Again, we’ll just figure it’s steel since I have no idea what they use to make giant space ships of death. This estimate will be low balled because I’m sure there’s some kind of giant reactor in the middle of the Death Star that powers the ship, but since I have no specs on that we’ll have to pretend it isn’t there.

To get the mass of the outer hull use the calculation for the volume of a sphere twice.

(4/3)pi r^3

First, figure out the volume of a ball that is 140 kilometers in radius, then subtract from that a ball that is one meter shorter in radius. This will leave us a giant shell that is one meter thick. To make the calculation easier, let’s switch to meters. Also, I am using google to calculate all this, so if I make an error please let me know.

[(4/3)pi * (140,000m)^3] - [(4/3)pi * (139,999m)^3] =

[(4/3)*pi*2.744×10^15 - (4/3)*pi*2.7439412×10^15]m^3=

(1.14882133×10^16 -1.14879672×10^16) m^3=

2.461×10^11 cubic meters of steel

Now we can take the mass of the slightly smaller internal ball of steel (which we figured to be about 1.1488×10^16 cubic meters in the above calculation) and multiply it by 1/7 since we know that’s going to be about the volume of the inside that’s made of decking. Again, this is all guesswork but it should be a pretty close ball park figure.

[(1/7)*(1.1488×10^16)]m^3 =

1.641×10^15 cubic meters

Now for the fun part, we’re going to add both of the volumes and multiply by the weight of one cubic meter of steel. We will take this value to be 7936 kilograms because that’s what I could figure out quickly from google.

(1.641×10^15 + 2.46×10^11)m^3 * (7936kilograms/m^3)=

Now, if I didn’t screw up this means the Death Star has a mass of about

1.30249283×10^19 kilograms

Which means the Death Star has a mass about 1/1000 of the moon, not counting the people inside, the ships which are docked in all of its bays, or the mass of various droids.

For those of you who want an error analysis and significant figures, do the calculation yourself. I passed general physics long ago so that I would never have to do those things again.

Also, for those of you who might be curious, using this number it would be relatively simple to figure out how much energy it would take to vaporize the Death Star and whether or not this amount of energy would be sufficient to destroy the planet of Endor.

(Hint: It totally is more than enough energy to destroy Endor)

“Hey BC, for question of the week: Can you tell me why theoretically a hydrogen atom’s electron, attracted to the positive charge of the nucleus, does not make a quick B-line for it, but remains within its designated orbital region?

ps. I swear I’m not soliciting you for finals help, I’m just curious.

Tender regards, Ailley Us”

Dear Ailley, god damn it. Damn it. Okay, now that that’s out of my system let’s move on with my brief and half-assed explanation.

The first thing you have to do is stop thinking of an electron as a little ball that goes around a cluster of other little balls. This misconception is one of the primary disconnects between the classical Newtonian model and observation. It is also one of the main reasons that we need Quantum Physics to explain how the Universe works.

Around a nucleus we observe that an electron behaves more like a wave than it does a particle. In fact, as you so eloquently pointed out, it falls into a three-dimensional (or possibly more) orbital around the nucleus.

Think of the orbital as billowing garbage sack around a baseball. It takes weird shapes around the nucleus but I find this to be a fairly useful visualization (or course it is not to scale). However, a big misunderstanding is that there is a small ball that moves very fast all over this garbage sack. This is wrong.

Every place an electron can be along that garbage sack, it is, until the moment you try to look for it and it picks a spot at random to appear. Yes, it’s screwed up. Read up on the Uncertainty Principle if you want a fuller understanding of it. We want to think of an electron as being somewhere in the skin of the billowing garbage sack, but the electron is the billowing garbage sack.

The main reason the electron doesn’t fall out of this orbital into the nucleus is conservation of energy (at least as far as I understand it). To maintain the same amount of energy the electron may only take certain locations around the nucleus. This determines the shape of our billowing garbage sack. My understanding is that due to the wave like properties of an electron, the nucleus is “canceled” out after a fashion as a location for an orbital to exist. If I’m remembering my chemistry right this comes out of “Particle in a Box” calculations. Looking into that would be helpful.

Again, I’m not a nuclear physicist and I hate chemistry, so if you want a fuller explanation I would spend a couple of hours on Wikipedia with a Physics textbook. I was planning on giving a stupid little spiel about how the electron is jealous of the relationship a proton has with the neutron, but then my inability to ignore scientific queries kicked in and I had to give a semi-complete answer. I apologize to everyone who legitimately did not want to know.

“I’m having roommate issues. How can I get rid of one without resorting to calling the police? She’s not on the lease but I don’t want to waste their time. I’ve been being an ass to her, reminding her that her daughter hates her (shes 42 and the other roommate and I are early 20s) and keeping her up all night with loud music but I think I need to take it up a notch, any suggestions?

~Rachel B.”

When I was a young man, my house was frequently targeted by Jehovah’s Witnesses who would try to disseminate their religious pamphlets to me. I was too polite to turn them away, which they mistook for curiosity. This is why it was fortunate my step-father was around. Let me explain further.

As many of you may have read, my step-father is a Micronesian from an island where there is no native word for love. Continuing the proud traditions of his people he used to barge around the house wild-haired, wearing only an aged pair of white briefs, carrying a fillet knife with him at all times, occasionally chewing on a steak bone to try to suck out the marrow. For those of you who would say this is racist, I am sorry. It’s what he did.

The point being this: when the Jehovah’s Witnesses saw my step-father open the door, wearing a pair of underwear, holding a knife, and chewing on a bone they quickly found reason to depart. Ever after we were put on a sort of “Do not Solicit” list and never received religious pamphlets ever again.

I believe a similar strategy could work on your room-mate. You must make her feel threatened, without ever actually threatening her. Taking any of the following steps may help rid you of her.

1. Communicate solely by tying notes around arrows and shooting them at objects next to her.

2. File your teeth to points and erect a voodoo shrine in your front room with a picture of her just below a dark monkey idol surrounded by chicken feathers.

3. Cease to wipe, citing that to do so would be against God’s will as he placed that poo there and you have no right to move it.

4. Watch “The Faces of Death” and laugh hysterically whenever you room-mate is within ear shot.

5. Download “The Anarchist’s Cookbook” and dedicate all of your counter space to making explosives “just in case” of “The Government.”

6. Play Celine Dion records at all hours of the day. However, sing along to them as you imagine Rob Zombie would, or as near as you can imitate.

7. Buy serpents. I am of the opinion that no person has any business owning any kind of reptile unless they are some kind of biologist. I also believe that the mass of the reptile is directly proportional to the dysfunction of the individual. I would recommend buying the biggest python you can and feeding it small mice while gently kissing its snout.

8. Leave full, obviously unopened pill bottles in your medicine cabinet. Make sure these pill bottles are clearly labeled “Anti-Psychotics.”

9. Learn magic tricks. As a person who used to do sleight of hand tricks fairly often, I can assure you there is nothing people find more annoying than people who just pull scarves out of the air.

10. Join the Westborough Baptist Church

On that note, any further questions can be sent to brandoncwoods@gmail.com

Now for a PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT
Help a seventeen year old boy go to college by clicking HERE. Then vote for RICHARD HENDRIX SUTPHIN.

His cousin is a long time reader of mine who asked me to do this on his behalf. He comes from a poor family and cannot afford schooling on his own. Also, he has not missed a day of school since kindergarten. I am told that if he gets enough votes he will get a four year scholarship to the school of his choice, and that he wants to be a neonatal surgeon. So, if you could please spent two minutes, it would really help a kid out.