In Star Wars, blaster shots always reflect off the lightsaber as seen in so many different scenes. In A New Hope, while Luke is using the training drone on the Falcon the training drone's lasers are absorbed by the lightsaber. What is the reason the drone's shots are absorbed instead of bouncing?
I mean obviously they didn't want the shots bouncing around the Falcon in the movie, but does anyone know the technical reason for why they don't?
Lightsabers are essentially plasma blades.
Plasma has a strong magnetic field surrounding it.
Blaster bolts are also plasma with some mechanic to keep them from dispersing over longer distance.
The fields interact, so the bolt can be reflected.
The training shots are "made of" electricity (electrons) that are only meant for short distances and those will disperse when hitting a magnetic field.
Being a training remote, its blasts are less powerful than normal blasters.
When any blast hits a saber blade, some of the energy is absorbed into the blade and then, if the blast was strong enough, the excess energy is reflected off the blade into a different direction.
Blasts that weren't that powerful to begin with, like the training remote, would simply be absorbed rather than bouncing off in a different direction.
This is supported by the Wookieepedia page on Remotes:
Many Force-users (such as the Jedi Younglings) used remotes as training tools to hone blaster defense abilities by deflecting the remote's low energy plasma blasts with their lightsabers.
The fact that it says low energy plasma blasts supports the explanation provided above. The remote's low energy blasts are absorbed on contact. Normal combat blasters would have high energy blasts that can't be fully absorbed on contact and thus they are reflected off into a different direction.
NOTE: Eumel's answer claims the remote fires bolts of electricity rather than plasma. That, however, is contradicted by the Wookieepedia page on Remotes, which states remotes fire "low energy plasma blasts".
