Comments on: Episode 46: Archimedes’ Death Ray

By: yankyourchain

yankyourchain — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 21:33:36 +0000

On “World’s Toughest Fixes” with Sean Riley, episode “Solar Power Plant”, they set a block of wood on fire instantly with a half-meter parabola mirror. Distance was short, but goes to show that precision is everything.
Trouble is to get the mirror and ship aligned – nearly impossible.

By: m0nkey

m0nkey — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:57:53 +0000

though i think arcemides soz about the spelling waz a great man who desrves respect but i dont think that the death ray waz real az it haz to be so spithic lik location, time, heat i mean wat if the romans ataced in the middle of the night then wat ur stuffed arnt u

By: love

love — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 08:46:37 +0000

system error on this: greek ships were covered in tar or bitumen. much easier to ignite than just naked wooden planks.

By: Luc Botes

Luc Botes — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 13:43:56 +0000

This won’t work for you but anyway. Imagine a whole city holding up 2 metre mirrors. Surely this would work. Somebody has exaggerated about good archimedes was.

By: Mike Smith

Mike Smith — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 21:20:05 +0000

There was an alternative energy programme in UK hosted by James May which showed a mirror array pointing towards a water tower which instantly turned the water into steam to drive a turbine and generate electricity. I believe it was in Europe (poss France) but definately worked. So Archimedes myth is very plausible.

By: Alan Small

Alan Small — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 04:53:37 +0000

You claim this busted but you never did it with the resources available to this genius. He had a legion of well trained, professional soldiers.
rimming a large round shield with leather, laying down a round sheet of bronze or copper then attaching a center hand grip would produce a a slight parabolic shape that would focus light 100s of yards away. A legion of soldiers (not a bunch of giggling volunteers) all concentrating on maintaining their individual reflected light on the target (not one huge array).
Go to VMI or West Point and get disciplined soldiers and plenty of them thrn try it as Archimedes would have really done it before you arrogantly declare a far more brilliant man than yourself “busted”.

By: Haziq

Haziq — Sat, 16 May 2009 10:17:00 +0000

Mythbusters! I love wat u do!!!I wanna be a future mythbuster!!!

By: skeptic

skeptic — Wed, 06 May 2009 16:59:21 +0000

it could have been 1 million polished bronze shields too..

little did you realized that the time, economical and technical constrains back in those days wouldn’t allow them to even have lots of polished bronze shields?

By: Johnboy

Johnboy — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 19:34:01 +0000

Adam Hart-Davis (what the ancients did for us ,BBC) created a minuture array of mirrors and a miniture ship. Set it on fire perfectly.

By: Richard

Richard — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 21:36:07 +0000

The Archimides death ray IS FEASIBLE. I just watched the Mythbusters episode 16 where MB could not get the collection of mirrors to focus the sunlight properly. I am watching Discovery Science in Ukraine and amazingly the next day (Jan 27th, 2009) I watched, on the same channel, an Australian guy successfully focusing the sun’s rays using an almost identical set up, to provide solar power for ‘Megapolis’ – the series about future megacities. One of their biggest problems was precisely far to much heat from the sun ray focuser which resulted in all sorts of things catching fire! MB needs to revisit this as it definitely looks plausible. Richard