Weapon energy calc help (farscape)

[namdoolb]

Ok, what I'm trying to do is to come up with a rough figure for the power of the pulse pistol.

Figures and assumptions so far:
One shot is fired from the weapon. Upon impact the projectile vapourises a roughly cylindrical volume of body mass, volume is 0.02 cubic meters (0.02826, but that many s.f. is just pointless). It takes 8 frames to do this.

Now, it's not a human that gets shot, it's an alien. But for the purposes of this rough and ready calculation we could assume similar melting and boiling points, and specific heat capacity as for the human body, as well as assuming an initial body temperature normal for a human.

Now, if I had the figures for the specific heat capacity and the boiling/melting points I could probably do this, but unfortunatley I don't

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help out with this

[Shinova]

Ok, what I'm trying to do is to come up with a rough figure for the power of the pulse pistol.

Figures and assumptions so far:
One shot is fired from the weapon. Upon impact the projectile vapourises a roughly cylindrical volume of body mass, volume is 0.02 cubic meters (0.02826, but that many s.f. is just pointless). It takes 8 frames to do this.

Now, it's not a human that gets shot, it's an alien. But for the purposes of this rough and ready calculation we could assume similar melting and boiling points, and specific heat capacity as for the human body, as well as assuming an initial body temperature normal for a human.

Now, if I had the figures for the specific heat capacity and the boiling/melting points I could probably do this, but unfortunatley I don't

Thanks in advance to anyone who can help out with this

Which alien was it that got shot?

Cause if it's a Sheyang (sp?), they explode. If it's a Scarren, it takes over ten pulse shots to take them down.

[Crossover_Maniac]

The following calculations are made with the assumptions that

1). the alien body temp. is the same as a human's (37 C)

2). the alien has a body composed mostly of water

3). the alien has a density approximate 1000 kg/m^3 (humans are about as dense as water and can float if you hold your breath).

Heat of vaporization for water 2.26E6 J/kg

Specific heat of water: 4184 J/(kg*C).

mass=0.02826 m^3*1000 kg/m^3=28.26 kg

Minimum energy to vape alien=(2.26E6 J/kg+4184*(100-37))*28.26 =71.35 megajoules.

(100-37)*

[namdoolb]

The following calculations are made with the assumptions that

1). the alien body temp. is the same as a human's (37 C)

2). the alien has a body composed mostly of water

3). the alien has a density approximate 1000 kg/m^3 (humans are about as dense as water and can float if you hold your breath).

Heat of vaporization for water 2.26E6 J/kg

Specific heat of water: 4184 J/(kg*C).

mass=0.02826 m^3*1000 kg/m^3=28.26 kg

Minimum energy to vape alien=(2.26E6 J/kg+4184*(100-37))*28.26 =71.35 megajoules.

(100-37)*

Cool, and as it does this in 8 frames (8/25 of a second

((2.26E6+4184*(100-37))*28.26)*25/8

That makes the power of the weapon
222 Megawatts
Bearing in mind the rough and ready nature of the figures used I think we can safely round it to 200Megawatts without any further loss of accuracy.

Shinova, the Alien was Namtar, from the Episode "Dna mad scientist"

[namdoolb]

And unless I'm mistaken, the destructive ability of the weapon is approximately equal to 16kg of TNT per shot.

4.2E6 MJ/kg / 71 MJ = ~16kg

Not huge, but this is a handgun, not a capital ship weapon.
I just have to figure out now if I can scale this up for the capital ship weapons.