I just spoke with MIT professor David Wallace and grad student Barry Kudrowitz who are both involved in MIT's Product Engineering Processes course, a creative deisgn and engineering class. Last week, the class demonstrated that Archimedes's Death Ray, as previously "busted" on TV's Mythbusters (episode 16), could have been real. Legend has it that during the siege of Syracuse in 212 BC, Archimedes made a burning glass to burn up the enemy Roman warships. To see if it was possible, the MIT crew built a 10+ foot long model ship out of wood and positioned 129 1-foot square mirrors nearby. The results:
Flash ignition!
In an instant there is a large, open flame. The volatiles liberated from the wood ignite at roughly 1100 F.
Open, sustaining flame occurred less than 10 minutes after the sun was in a clear patch of sky!
UPDATE: Site seems to be down intermittently available right now.
