Slashdot Mirror
Archimedes Death Ray
Werner Heuser writes "Ancient Greek and Roman historians recorded that during the siege of Syracuse in 212 BC, Archimedes (a notably smart person) constructed a burning glass to set the Roman warships, anchored within bow and arrow range, afire. The story has been much debated and oft dismissed as myth ... Intrigued by the idea and an intuitive belief that it could work, MIT's 2.009ers decided to apply the early product development 'sketch or soft modeling' process to the problem."
Welcome our Death Ray weilding overlords
... and the server is a smoking husk before the first comment is posted.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
News for nerds, Four days later.
And Mythbusters is LAW!
The Tech Terminal
That's an Archimedes Death Ray, now banned from all commercial airline flights. Lame.
if the ships were within arrow range... wouldn't a flaming arrow have done the job just as well... why the over engineering?
No wonder why the webpage says:
8 15d479865f65c52/index.html
"Click on image thumbnails to see a larger images. Video clips will be online next week"...
Why next week?
Can't we just take down the entire MIT web server! =P
So, those poor students in mid-session won't be able
to access to their course material and similar! =)
That's nice a new excuse just came out!
"Sir, I couldn't do my assignment, because the MIT web server was slashdotted,
so I couldn't access the course material, can I get an extension.... PLEASE!!!!"
So, next time, you guys have a hard deadline assignment,
please just post an article on slashdot and there you go.
For everyone else, please use the Mirror...
http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/90e7777b89ad9e53
as tin foil hadn't been invented yet, his enemies would have had no viable defense against this weapon. Devastating!
The Slashdot death ray doesn't even use mirrors!
I'm wondering if their logic is "If you can build a death ray, you can't run for office, since it would give you an unfair advantage. Who the hell is going to vote against the guy with the death ray?"
in 212 BC, Archimedes (a notably smart person) constructed a burning glass to set the Roman warships, anchored within bow and arrow range, afire.
If the enemy ships were anchored within bow and arrow range, I suspect that while Archimedes was fiddling with his mirrors, a few archers dipped their arrows in pitch and fired them at the fleet. Eventually, when Archimedes finished aiming his master weapon he was overjoyed to discover the fleet in flames. Archimedes reported his success to the king, and went down in history as the oldest recorded example of a horribly over-engineered solution to a simple problem.
I'll bet Archimedes as a child liked to burn ants with a magnifying glass, too. ;-)
A story about boats that shoot rays and no one has yet mentioned sharks with frickin laser beams?
A mirror can also prevent the server from burning up.
Marvin knew: "Think of a number, any number..."
Don't screw with Archimedes.
I am not a crackpot.
Guess what? It doesn't really matter, because despite the intuitive belief that the 2009ers profess that it would have worked, the evidence (Rome sacked Syracuse and Archimedes was killed -- some say inadvertently) demonstrates that if it did work, it didn't work well enough.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
"So what's that in units that the rest of the world uses?"
You can express it as 1 getacalculator (or 10^youlazyfuck if you prefer scientific notation).
Not really all that interesting of a story in my opinion.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
This is before bow 'n' arrows, back in a time when lasers were the weapon of choice.
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
Wow, boat nerdfight!
"The greeks would have had people holding the mirrors, not tables and stands."
Apologies if this is so hot off the presses that it's still a controversial issue, but the ancient Greeks DID have the technology to build both a table AND a stand, and probably enough raw materials to build more than one of each. Admittedly, they were a crude primitive people and the genius required to raise things above the ground with an elevated structure composed of a flat piece of wood with legs is vastly more complex than building the Parthenon. But since we're talking feasability, they MIGHT have been able to pull it off.
The ancient Greeks were not stupid. When they wanted unusual materials, they just ordered them on eBay.
According to NASA, about 750 whatevers.
:wq
Hah, I was born on the boat built by my great great grandfather who was replacing the boat inhabited by generations of our ancestors, the boat my great grandfather and grandfather and father were also born and lived on until their dying days. I have sailed to every port in every every continent and can count the amount of hours I have spent ashore on the fingers of one hand ( in binary ) so there is nothing I do not know about the motion of boats.
Italy is commonly known as the land with different sun than greeks have.
You are ALL missing one very important fact. Back in Greek times, the earth was 1000x closer to the sun, and the sun was 100x hotter. So only one small mirror was needed, and a lot of Coppertone Suntan Lotion. Why do I have to teach you important scientific facts time after time after time?? You Earthmen are stupid, STUPID!! No wonder Xangargo will conquer you.
called Product Engineering Processes
So that would make class lectures PEP talks? *ducks*
Wait, let me guess: You're pirates?
I remember an episode of Mr. Wizard from way back where they use a parabolic mirror to burn/cook a hot dog. It inspired me, but lacking a parabolic mirror, I had to make do with a magnifying glass. And lacking an available hot dog, I had to make do with ants.
Wait - how can someone who sets things on fire and blows things up and drops things from high places have his credibilty "busted"?
By failing to set something on fire, duh! : )
You can't take the sky from me...