Wisconsin High School Student Builds His Own Lightsaber, Wins Gold Medal
Kaebren Walker is one of manyyyy Star Wars fans who always dreamed of owning their own real lightsaber. But, the Madison, Wisconsin high school student stands out among the rest because he decided to make his own. And now, he’s winning awards for it.
Walker spent a total of 18 months creating the lightsaber. But, before even attempting anything, he sat down and researched. He found three people who had successfully made lightsabers before, all using a different method. He used YouTube videos on how they did it to begin his own project.
Initially, Walker just wanted to make the saber for fun. He didn’t imagine even entering any competitions, much less winning a gold medal from one!
Going in with a “Why not?” attitude, Walker entered the NAACP’s Afro-Academic, Cultural, Technological and Scientific Olympics or ACT-SO. He received a gold medal at the virtual 43rd annual awards ceremony in July.
Kaebren Walker created a lightsaber to win gold in the engineering competition for NAACP's ACT-SO awards. https://t.co/3WkWUpFqFY
— madison.com (@madisondotcom) July 26, 2021
As far as the lightsaber itself, it uses acetone and methanol to ignite a flame that extends to the end of the “blade”, which creates the effect. Walker says it unfortunately doesn’t make the whoosh sounds like they do in the movies. But, he says when it’s on, it looks like a small flamethrower and makes “a cool flame sound“.
According to WPR, he says, “It came off really complex to other people, and I feel that that kind of gave me a little confidence boost because I’m like, ‘Man, I feel like an actual Jedi,'”.
Walker plans on pursuing art and design in college, but he is not discounting a double major in engineering yet.
Source: Wisconsin Public Radio
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