Science/Physics in PC games

[racolvin]

I'm posting this here in HT because I'm looking for some hard science answers ....

In Half-Life 2, my favorite weapon is the crossbow that shoots the red-hot piece of rebar for a bolt. If you've played the game you know that the time from loading the bolt to the time it gets red hot and ready to shoot is only a couple of seconds.

So my question to the HT folks here is: How much energy would it take to heat a roughly 18-inch piece of rebar to a red-hot state in approximately 2 seconds?

 

[silverpig]

1. Look up the temperature of a blackbody with colour "red", or just google for "temperature red hot" to get a number.
2. Look up specfic heat capacity of steel (Joules/[Kelvin*kg])
3. Estimate mass of 18 inch piece of rebar (say 1 kg).
4. You have to get the rebar from ~300K to the number you find in part 1, so subtract (answer from part 1) - 300K
5. (answer from part 4) * (answer from part 2) * (answer from part 3) = energy needed in joules
6. (answer from part 5) / 2 seconds = power in watts required

 

[racolvin]

Apparently someone else likes that crossbow idea as much as I do 🙂

http://ask.metafilter.com/3528...ebar-crossbow-possible

 

[QuantumPion]

Well considering your HEV suit contains a power supply sufficient for operating a gravity gun, rail gun, gluon gun, etc, I don't think an arc-welder would be too out of the question 🙂

 

[racolvin]

lol .. good point ... I assume the HEV also has some sort of bio-assisted strength to be able to actually carry and utilize this stuff 😉