Is Rita Repulsa's Staff More Destructive Than Her Monsters? | Because Science

the original Power Rangers would have you believe that the most dangerous thing that can happen is a giant monster created by Rita Repulsa but watch the original show again that may not be true the most dangerous thing that repulsive does may come before she makes any monsters grow something potentially so dangerous that militaries have considered it a means of mass destruction for the last few decades it's throwing this thing and that's it remember the original Power Rangers it was a simpler time it was a better time I had the toys I knew the moves and I always just assumed that the giant monsters were the true threat but after receiving this question from Ellucian Turan on Twitter I realized that throwing a staff from the moon to earth had the potential to be a catastrophe that not even the Megazord could handle the theory here is that repulses staff might be considered a kinetic impactor more or less a giant metal tube drop from orbit for example a tungsten rod the size of a telephone pole if it was in orbit and then directed into Earth's atmosphere would be traveling by the time it reached the ground three kilometers per second or Mach 10 III and right before impact all the impactors energy would be in the form of kinetic energy equal to one-half the mass times velocity squared this was the critical calculation in the proposed project Thor in the 1950s and would drop a tungsten rod the size of a telephone pole through the atmosphere to deliver the equivalent bound up in kinetic energy of 12 tons of TNT anywhere on the surface of the earth in minutes but a tungsten telephone-pole-sized space bullet would weigh many tons and travel through the atmosphere very very quickly so to find out if Reta repulses staff is more than just a staff we have to estimate both its mass and its velocity to see if it has the true power of a kinetic impactor if you don't like math this part of the episode is going to be a bit of a drag ranges you'll get it no matter how fast an object is traveling through space when it encounters Earth's atmosphere air will get in the way and act to slow it down even as gravity fights to accelerate we can calculate just how much an object will slow down by including drag force inside of a freefall equation which given enough distance will slow an object down to its terminal velocity or when an object's weight equals the drag force acting on this terminal velocity equation has mass and gravity and density and area and a drag coefficient so now we need some staff statistics I'm going to assume a two point five centimeter diameter staff that is pointed at one end and that the staff weighs 5 kilograms I'm also going to assume that the drag coefficient is 0.2 the drag coefficient is critical in determining how much drag force applies to an object and this is pretty generous now it's time to plug the number I'm sorry given our assumptions and using the acceleration due to gravity on Earth's surface as well as a constant air density for the Earth's atmosphere we get a terminal velocity for read repulses staff of 900 meters per second almost mach 3 or 3 times the speed of sound this in effect would have an impact like one kilogram of tnt going off but in kinetic energy maybe not enough to destroy the Megazord but it's still impressive for a staff velocity will be the critical component here so what if Rita's staff did it strike the ground like a kinetic impactor if you change the variables around a bit like staff area and staff drag coefficient Rita's staff then if it was perfectly streamlined could hit the ground like a scary space weapon traveling beyond Mach 10 and if it did it would have the kinetic energy of an armor-piercing tank round now that would give she damage so if Rita Repulsa really did throw her staff to earth like this then it would impact the ground with the same amount of energy as an armor-piercing tank round and do a decent amount of damage I guess it's not the same kind of damage that a giant monster would do but wait wait wait stop the tape roll troll back how long does it take the staff to get from the moon to earth count it yeah I count about three seconds we did this we got to go back this changes everything we've got to go back the moon is 384,000 kilometers away to cross that immense distance in just three seconds points to an absurd average staff speed this would be a velocity a decent fraction of the speed of light and I have no idea how it would travel this fast or how it would even travel through the atmosphere not even meteors can do that but we see it do just that and if it did it would impact the ground with the same kinetic energy to form a crater like meteor crater in Arizona with 40 thousand trillion joules of kinetic energy it's a crater a kilometer wide in a hundred and seventy meters deep this would be enough to destroy the Megazord and is way more dangerous than any giant monster so could Rita repulses staff in fact be more dangerous than the monster she creates with it well if it was indestructible and can move through the atmosphere as quickly and as perfectly as we see it do in the show then it would become a kinetic impactor sent from the moon that would at the at least be deadly for a ranger and at most be able to wipe out an entire city and because it's a moon base these orbital strikes could happen anywhere at any time that is certainly more dangerous than a giant pig monster that can be defeated by feeding it a spicy radish why leukocytes you know that lord zedd dude he doesn't have any skin and he lives on the moon the moon has no atmosphere when there's a significant difference in pressure for a liquid the liquid usually has what's called a vapor pressure so there's a liquid and then there's a tiny amount of liquid over top of it that's in the form of vapor and that's because it feels quote-unquote it feels the need to fill vacuums with some of itself this is why water will boil at lower pressures because if you lower the pressure on the outside of the water water wants to evaporate up and fill that vacuum so if you had no skin and there's blood all over you all the time and you were on the moon with no atmosphere the difference in pressure between your blood the liquid that is your blood and the moon's atmosphere would mean that Lord Zedd would constantly constantly be surrounded by a vapor of Blood gas because the blood would be compelled to fill the vacuum with some of its own vapor so not only as he villainous he would look Supes gross [Music]

Channel: Because Science

Views: 74,323

Keywords: Nerdist, Fvid, Because Science, Kyle Hill, power rangers, rita repulsa, staff, monsters, elizabeth banks, green ranger, megazord, goldar, kinetic energy, impactor, meteor crater, moon, orbital strike, movies, tv

Id: Qi3NsQEMHwQ

Length: 7min 38sec (458 seconds)

Published: Thu May 07 2020