Why are droids killed when chopped in half?

Question

Related to this question

• Where is a droid's brain located?

Why is it that droids are deactivated / killed when they are chopped in half? The B1 Battle Droid is narrowist at its midsection, but that shouldn't affect the upper torso from continuing to operate.

Wookieepedia says:

During the Clone Wars, Galactic Republic clone troopers learned to aim at the hips, torsos, and arm joints of the B1s to quickly destroy them. But a head shot was the only decisive way to disable a droid. They didn't need arms, legs or even bodies to pass intel to central command.

But that certainly isn't true, because in both the cartoons and the movies we see droids getting killed by simply being chopped in half in their midsection.

Asoka is also able to kill a SUPER BATTLE DROID by chopping it in half.

Answer 1

Pure speculation incoming!

By using a plasma weapon to cut through metal you also fuse every wire/circuit in that path together. This effectively shorts together a number of intelligence and power circuits that are transfering data/energy from the top of a droid unit to the bottom. When the power conduits in the droid short with the control circuits, both would be damaged, and the control circuitry which likely uses a lower power type may be completely fried by the sudden ensurge of high energy.

Essentially if you stab a metal object into a computer, the entire computer is fried, not just the "wound" site.

Modern technology now uses a blowout device like a fuse to take the blunt of the energy surge, resulting in the destruction of said device. Droids may have a similar device, but it would need to be replaced to get them up and going again. Currently a double fuse device can exist to attempt to return power, but if the circuit is still shorted, it would blow that one as well.

Plus, cutting driods in half looks way cooler than always having to go for head shots. This is robots, not zombies.

Answer 2

The battle droids would have to have been mass produced for so many to have been made. which means that there would be several design flaws and would only be effective in large numbers I'm not sure but I think that their power source was on their back wich is another common place to be hit and the had no shielding at all. Other droids were harder to kill like the manga-guards from Revenge of the Sith who kept fighting after their heads were cut off.