- 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 Repulsa 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.
(upbeat music)
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
Alucien_Torran 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 Repulsa's staff
might be considered a kinetic impactor,
more or less a giant metal tube dropped 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.
Aye aye aye.
And right before impact,
all of 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.
(electric guitar music)
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 Rita Repulsa's
staff is more then just a staff we have to
estimate both it's mass and it's 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 rangers.
(chuckles)
you'll get it.
No matter how fast an object it traveling through space
when it encounters earths atmosphere air will get in the way
and act to slow it down even as gravity
fights to accelerate it.
We can calculate just how much an object will slow down
by including drag force inside of a free fall equation,
which given enough distance will slow an object down
to it's terminal velocity, or when an objects weight
equals the drag force acting on it.
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 2.5 centimeter diameter staff that
is pointed at one end and that the staff weighs five
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 numbers in in in
I'm sorry.
Given our assumptions and using the acceleration
due to gravity and earths surface as well as a
constant air density for the earth atmosphere
we get a terminal velocity for Rita Repulsa's
staff of 900 meters per second,
almost mach three or three 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 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 do some 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 amour 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, wait, wait, stop the tape.
Roll it back, how long does it take the staff to
get from the moon to the earth, count it.
Yeah, I count about thee seconds.
We gotta go back, this changes everything, gotta 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 from a crater like
meteor crater in Arizona with 40 thousand
trillion joules of kinetic energy, it's
a crater a kilometer wide and 170 meters deep.
This would be enough to destroy the Megazord
and is way more dangerous than any giant monster.
So could Rita Repulsa's staff in fact be more dangerous
than the monsters she creates with it, well if it was
indestructible and could move through
the atmosphere is 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 very 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?
Because science.
(upbeat music)
thank you so much for watching, make sure to follow
me on twitter @Sci-Phile where you can suggest ideas
for future episodes like the idea that spawned this
episode and on Instagram under the same handle where
I'm now posting mini episodes like
the one I did today about Goldar.
Go check it out and thanks for watching, already said that.
Bye.
Get ready because it's morphin time.
The Power Rangers will be shifting into
turbo and rocketing onto the big screen.
Five ordinary teens must become something extraordinary
when they learn that their small town of Angel Grove
and the world is on the verge of
being obliterated by an alien threat.
The reimagined Rangers stars a diverse group of
up and comers including Dacre Montgomery, Naomi Scott,
RJ Cyler, Becky G, Ludi Lin, and feature veteran
bad asses Bill Hader, Elizabeth Banks, and Bryan Cranston.
Go, go, check out Power Rangers, one of the most highly
anticipated films of the year on Friday, March 24, go, go.
You know that Lord Zed 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, a liquid usually
has what's called a vapor pressure so there's a liquid
and there that'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 out side 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 you're blood and the moons
atmosphere would mean Lord Zed would constantly
be surrounded by a vapor of blood gas
because the blood would be compelled to fill the vacuum
with some of it's own vapor, so not only is he
villainousness, he would look supes gross.
(tinkley music)