Akane's Mallet and Einstein's Theory of Relativity, with emphasis on gender abilities

One of the mysteries in Ranma 1/2 is Akane's mallet, which she can seem to materialize from thin air, hit Ranma with it, and then get it to disappear all in one, fluid motion.

I present here one scientific possibility for Akane's manifestation of her mallet-sama. According to Einstein's Theory of Relativity, energy equals mass times the velocity of light, squared. This is the formula that the atomic bomb was developed from; the mass of uranium is used and converted energy.

However, one thing conveniently overlooked by scientists is that, mathematically, an equation works both ways. Thus, if matter can be used to produce energy, then energy can be used to produce matter. No question about this at all, since the equation must work both ways.

Akane is a somewhat violent person, to put it mildly. Very attractive, definitely, but with a problem controlling her temper. What it seems that she is doing is using her anger to manipulate energy to produce matter.

When Ranma uses his chi energy to produce an energy blast, it remains energy. When Akane focuses her anger, it affects the "quantum foam" structure of the universe around it, manifesting itself in the form of a solid object, namely her mallet. Thus, Akane is making sure that Einstein's Theory of Relativity equation does, indeed, work both directions.

The next question is this: why can Akane do this and not Ranma? This might relate to the differences in the mental thought processes between males and females. Females, in general (and there are exceptions, of course) are much more intuitive than males. Thus, she uses her intuitive abilities to produce the very thing that she needs at that moment to use with her anger; hence, she becomes angry, her mind uses its intuitive abilities and then alters the quantum foam structure of the universe about her, producing her mallet.

A reply

I received the following reply to my above essay. A good part of it is above my head, but I think all the same it's a really neat reply. I'm glad to see another Ranko fan looking at this "mystery."

Hi,

I though I'd just make a note on your idea. In actuality physicists don't forget the equation works the other way round. The problem is that c^2 is huge. This means that a minute amount of matter is a _huge_ amount of energy.

If I am not mistaken all the energy produced by our sun (and sent in all the different directions in space - not only reaching earth) is the equivalent of 4 grams of matter (if you're not metric, than an apple weighs around 100 grams). In other words were even a single gram of matter do be converted to energy here on earth (and not contained, but there is currently no way in **** of containing that kind of magnitude of energy) there would be no Earth left - it would be vaporized.

If you look at this than you undoubtedly realize that atomic/nuclear bombs and thermonuclear bombs weigh quite a lot more than even a gram (you need a kilogram or so of Uranium/Plutonium for the nuclear/atomic part, and in a thermonuclear you add in quite a lot (kilograms?) of hydrogen/deuterium). ?Unfortunately? the explanation is very simple - in both atomic and nuclear bombs we don't have to deal with energy matter conversion.

Star trek maybe science fiction, however where we to possess any amount of antimatter and its containment were to fail than it would anhillate with an equal amount (masswise) of matter and undergo total matter energy conversion. This means a gram of antimatter (joins with a gram of matter) is quite capable of vaporizing our planet. The situation isn't actually that bad since till now no significant (i.e. non-microscopic, more than an atom or so) amounts of antimatter have ever been found occuring in nature. Thus the only antimatter we have is the antimatter we produce - which is produced via the opposite - i.e. energy matter conversion. Obviously due to our limited energy supply (and _huge_ losses along the way) we are barely able to produce a couple hundred anti-hydrogen atoms (using in the process more energy than will be produced by their anhillation by a factor of a few tens of thousands).

Thus until we somehow find free floating antimatter in space (can't exist close to normal matter since it anhillates) we don't have to worry about it - thermonuclear weapons are a lot easier and cheaper to make.

Now, back to nuclear/atomic/thermonuclear weaponry. Yes - they are based on E=mc^2. However they are not based on: matter -> energy or rather (since the above is not possible) matter + antimatter -> energy but instead are based on: matter -> matter + energy This is sort of like a cup of hot chocolate (our matter) cooling (our process) and releasing heat (our energy) into the environment. The key is that the amount of matter on both sides of the equation is almost identical, so the difference (which obviously becomes energy) is very minute. Even so it is enough to cause a nuclear explosion.

In nuclear weaponry we have to do with fission, basically the Uranium (or Plutonium, etc..) cools down. It does this naturally all the time (but very slowly). However when a large amount of it is collected in one area it starts to act as catalist for its own cooling reaction - this causes the cooling reaction (actually fission) to accelerate and cascade, which causes massive cooling (fission) and a massive release of energy.

On the other hand thermonuclear weaponry uses a nuclear device as a trigger (the thermonuclear part requires a huge dose of incoming energy to get it started). And most of the energy comes from the fusion of hydrogen/deuterium atoms into helium (and this just happens to be the major reaction in the sun). Our reaction is basically again matter -> matter + energy (actually we have something along the lines of Deuterium + Deuterium = Helium + energy).

Anyway enough of this. The point is that even the energy released in a thermonuclear 250 megaton explosion (this somewhere along the most powerful to date) would - if converted to matter - produce a minute amount of matter (I don't know how much, but I am guessing less than a milligram, in other words somewhere aroung the weight of a grain of sand or so).

Obviously this is nowhere enough to make a mallet. If Akane could make her mallet out of energy she could oblitarate the Earth with it just as easily. Actually since there are always losses to heat, etc.. in any process (thermodynamics), the act of creating the mallet would necessarily release a part of it's mass/energy as heat - even this would be enough to vaporize the Earth (even assuming we have a super duper effective process with a 99.9% energy conversion effectiveness, which is ungodly, tha mallets mass being around a kilogram, would leave a gram of matter -> heat, which would easily vaporize the Earth).

Thus unfortunately your idea doesn't fit well with physics (even though it is a nice idea). You need to envolve magic in some way to make use of this idea in any way. Or just change the laws of physics (hey this is manga/anime...).

On a sidenote - physicists don't forget about the opposite side of the equation. It's just a hell of a lot easier to notice matter changing into energy (and matter) [both fission and fusion] than the otherway round (there are no major processes known at the current time). Sure the equation is true (and heavily tested) both ways - but at the atomic scale in conversions of single atoms to and from energy. The only macroscopic effects known are fission and fusion which lead to both nuclear bombs. (Actually this isn't quite true, all chemical reactions are actually based on E=mc^2 as well, except these are cases were there is even more matter and even less energy, so it is even more hidden. A normal chemical explosive actually releases its chemical binding energy when it explodes, it just so happens that this chemical binding energy is observable as a minute increase of the mass of the molecules of the explosive (before it explodes).)

So all in all Akane's mallet can't be an energy-matter conversion symptom. It is either a subspace/hyperspace/mallet-space produced mallet or a Chi-mallet (or a visual anime effect...). Or anime physics is totally different from the real world (which it is anyway...).

Thanks for listening,

Maciej Ranko Fanatic and Physics Student