The Star Wars Alphabet Project

An anonymous reader writes "A ship for every *other* letter in the alphabet. Jon Palmer is creating a Star Wars fighter out of LEGO for every letter in the alphabet (minus X,Y,B,A,E and V). He has about 5 to go. Check out the project on From Bricks to Bothans." I have to admit, some of these look even cooler than the ships created for the newer Star Wars movies.

Comments

Fonts?

[T-Kir]

How long before a font set will come out with the fighter characters? That would be quite nice!

Matter=Energy and Distance=Time

[FreeUser]

Ask a Star Wars fan about how Han Solo made a voyage in however many parsecs and prepare to boggle at the convoluted thought process behind the explanation.

I am not a Star Wars fan at all (though I used to be a casual enjoyer of the movies, before episodes I and II), but this point isn't as convulated or silly as you may think.

Remember Einstein's equation: e=m (more commonly known as e=mc^2)? You can drop the c^2 if you chose your units to be such that c=1, meaning that the speed of light is little more than a constant that converts between two sets of units that essentially measure the same thing. Indeed, physcicists have proposed that we adopt more natural units that clarify this relationship.

Distance and time are likewise the same thing (as becomes apparent when dealing with general relativity).

You could measure time in units that describe how far light travels in a given period of time. While saying "just give me 300,000 kilometers, I'll be right with you" is a little more verbose the "just give me a second," the two are, in terms of physics, identical. Alternatively, you could say something is about a nanosecond distant, i.e. that object is one light-nanosecond away from your current position.

The fact that we didn't understand the relationships between space and time, nor that between energy and mass, is why we've ended up with two essentially incompatible units for each (meters vs. seconds, grams vs. Joules) which make the e=m relationship, and the distance vs. time relationship, appear more complex than they actually are.

So, saying one made a trip in x parsecs (which is silly sounding and undoubtably resulted from George Lucas not knowing a thing about physics or the units he was tossing about) isn't really as silly as one would think.

What is silly is that we still have different units for distance vs. time, and mass vs. energy, when in each case they are one and the same.

There, now you've read a 'convuluted' explaination by someone who hates what Star Wars has become and was never a very ardent fan ... an explaination that happens to be true.