A common sense physics analysis of Dragon Ball ki blasts and punches

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>>160953770
At a battle power of 18,000, with battle powers being energy/second, this fist has accumulated a mere 0.0000146 x 18000 = 0.2628 units of energy—less if he's faster, paradoxically enough.

Scaling this travel time to the impact time on a normal human's punch (roughly 0.24 seconds travel and 0.06 seconds impact), and the impact time of Vegeta's punch is only 0.00000365 seconds. 0.2628/2 = 0.1314 units of energy in 0.00000365 seconds (3.65 microseconds) would be a power of 36,000, compared to the power 18,000 that generated it.

We know his battle power shoots up by concentrating it into a single point, a la Raditz (makes sense enough), and we know they do this with their energy attacks. As far as planet-busting power levels go (since we know Vegeta's Galick Gun can erase the Earth), what I can say is this: Goku's Kaio-Ken x3 that was stalemating Vegeta's Galick Gun with the same contact area had a battle power of 24,000. That seems perfectly reasonable. Vegeta's planet buster might have been a bit higher since Goku implied he would lose eventually, but I'll just use that.

There's not really any hard time-frame on it in the manga, and the anime seemingly isn't taking place in real time (see "five minutes on Namek"), but we know he said a couple lines of dialogue the whole time charging it (and presumably didn't have super-fast-talking-powers) and was done by the time he made his threat. With that said, around 10 seconds seems a reasonable time frame to charge it.

At the end of 10 seconds at a battle power of 24,000, the energy used up is 240,000 units—over 1.8 million times more than the punch. But the rate at which it's transferred is actually lower- he's taking about 10 seconds to transfer all that energy (if his discharge time matches charge time), so the energy/second is still 24,000 compared to the punch's 36k. So ki emission based defenses would not be as good at actually stopping it, given enough actual energy to match the planet busting.

>>160953811
But wait! There's more! The fact that it's using a lot more energy is reflected by its contact area. While its transferring that power at a lower rate, it's doing it all along the target's body. When Goku's Kamehameha, which is the exact same size as Vegeta's Galick Gun, hits Vegeta, it seems to have a moderately higher contact area than the front half of Vegeta's body. The average man has a surface area of 1.9 m^2, and while Vegeta's a small dude, at an official 5'4 he isn't a midget or anything. So the blast's contact area being moderately larger than half his surface area would put it its contact area at around 1 square meter (1,550 square inches). In that case it covers an area around x200 larger than Vegeta's 8 square inch fist. But, for the battle power comparison to hold up, the power per unit area of his punches and blasts have to match up with the battle power difference. So his punch should only have 50% more power per unit area. Power per unit area is called intensity, and when you consider things like the Special Beam Cannon and Oozarus, "battle power" itself seems to be a measure of intensity.

So really, he has to have MORE than x1.8 million the energy of his punch in his blast to get 2/3 the intensity at x200 the contact area, if battle powers count unit area, which they do. Let's put in terms of battle power units/square inch. The earlier numbers only accounted for time, not volume. In other words "36,000" should not be the total power, but power per square inch, the intensity. If Vegeta's fist transfers energy at a rate of 36,000 units per second per square inch, then along its whole 8 inch contact area its total power is 288,000 units. With a punch duration of 0.00000365 seconds, that puts the total energy of the punch at 288,000 x 0.00000365 = 1.0512 units.

>>160953842
>>160953842
Meanwhile, his blast has an [b]intensity[/b] of 24,000 power units per square inch along a ~1,550 inch contact area. In that case the total [b]power[/b] of his Galick Gun is 37,200,000. At a discharge time of 10 seconds, that puts the total energy of the blast at 37,200,000 x 10 = 372,000,000.

Now what happens if he fires that blast at someone? Well, the situation is still how it was earlier. If that 24,000 battle power blast hits a foe, who in turn is outputting a battle power (energy per second per square inch in this exercise) of 18,000 for his passive defense (which the scouter would read him at if he was just standing there), it's going to hurt a lot, but still be mostly negated by his passive defense. Compared to a punch the blast, despite transferring energy more slowly, will do more damage, but not nearly as much as the energy difference suggests; it's being sustained longer, so it's like he's getting punched at 2/3 power everywhere on his body over and over again for 10 seconds, BUT that's still not as bad as if a punch with a battle power of, say, 72,000 hit his opponent. Not totally unmanageable, since it's still being delivered at a rate his defenses can (barely) handle, but still damaging and potentially enough to end the fight.


Now what happens if he punches that person instead? Vegeta hits him at an intensity of 36,000 units. Some of the damage is bleeding through, more than in the energy blast due to the lower intensity, but it's not being sustained as long. On the other hand, if Vegeta delivers a punch with an intensity of 72,000 units to someone whose passive defense intensity is only 18,000, his opponent's passive defense does nothing meaningful to blunt his blow, an immense amount of energy "bleeds through," and the opponent is killed outright. Even though that same intensity of passive defense could've defended him from the 24,000 blast sustained over ten seconds well enough.

>>160953770
>>160953811
>>160953842
>>160953877
Think of armor. Take a 10mm thick steel plate. You can hold it over a camp fire forever and burn it with infinite energy, yet the steel will never melt. On the other hand, shoot it with a 5.56x45mm green tip round with a mere 1,700 joules of energy, and it will zip right through. That's the best comparison I can make between a 24,000 blast sustained for ten seconds and a 72,000 punch sustained for a mere fraction of a second. Ten seconds is a tiny amount of time for just about anyone else, but when you're swinging your arm at hypersonic speeds and your punches last microseconds, that may as well be an eternity.

Anyway, back to energy.

The blast has 372,000,000 energy units in total by the time it's done firing compared to 1.0152 units in the punch. That's more than x370 million difference. If you'll allow me to dredge up a real-world comparison again- the global binding energy of Earth is equivalent to 57,300,000 petatons of TNT. If you exceed this, you've passed the minimum threshold for "destroying" the Earth. Considering Vegeta said he would turn Earth "into space-dust," implying a very violent destruction, it seems reasonable his Galick Gun far exceeded the minimum required energy value to destroy the Earth. In that case, with my entirely bullshitted but still logically extrapolated numbers, 1 energy unit would equate to 1 petaton. At least at this point in the series. His blast can more than accomplish that, but his punch is still only 1 petaton, nowhere near enough to do so.

>tl;dr
Power is not the same as energy.

"Battle power" is a measure of intensity (energy/time = power, power/area = intensity).

Planet-busting energy attacks have hundreds of millions of times the raw energy output of punches, at least until the Buu arc.

Punches make up for this with high intensity and speed of delivery, especially since you can deliver a lot of punches very quickly.

Punches often have higher intensity than blasts.

>>160953946
While it is always fun to put physics into battle manga's, arriving at the conclusion that punches > energy blasts in intensity is self evident, even to a toddler reading the manga. Why bother punching if ki blasts were always superior, as in if only ki blasts could ever hope to cause damage there would be no reason to take the fight close in the first place.

When's the last time you saw sunlight?

>>160954941
Because Ki blasts takes more ki than it does using ki powered punches. Look at choustu, he does nothing but he's still weak.
Ki blasts and ki attacks are all techniques that act like a long distant punch. I know this isn't canon but look how Videl try to summon ki on her own, just pulling it out the first time, it exhausted he. Seems that summon ki from your body in the physical realm is very draining, and hence all the different ki techniques that don't require a lot of power but are very effective.
Punching and physical techniques are also effective, especially when ki is the power source to make a character bust through a wall. Plus many games have shown to build up ki one can either power up or build it up by punching, like excersize builds up stamina it also builds up ki in the dragonball world.

tl;dr: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmsRN78qMxM

>>160954941
you have no idea how many times I've seen people insist that punches and blasts carry the same amount of energy while using the terms "energy" and "power" like synonyms.

Good thread.

>>160956183
That's because they think ki power is the same as physical power. When ki creates the result of power out put. Plus ki is never clearly defined when it came to dragonball or at least fans just over think it. Ki is energy, but what's the difference between ki and stamina? Ki in dragonball is just equivalent to magic in fair tail
Haki in one piece, spirit pressure in bleach, chakra in naruto, Nen in HxH. All explained differently and used differently but all create that magical power that makes the characters do super human things.

thank you for your service op

/r/ing tl;dr for this thread