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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."
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!
You can also clearly see that there are still 3 mirrors not aimed correctly.
Now that Mythbusters is wrong, are there other myths that could be true?
With all due respect, I don't think the Mythbusters are as smart as Archimedes was. You shouldn't impugn someone just because they lived a long time ago.
...just my 2 gil.
Actually, they only disproved their own design and construction methods on this one. A properly-designed and -constructed working model was demonstrated on BBC Two's practical archeology programme, What The Ancients Did For Us
Yes, Archimedes was a very smart cookie, but he was surrounded by other smart cookies, who were also geting up to interesting things. IMO, ancient Greece was pretty much as technologicly advanced as 15th century Europe. Why we ended up having the industrial revolution, and the Greeks did not, becomes a very interesting question.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
True. Although I think the larger assumption in this case was scale. Archimedes was used to creating large stuctures and this experiment proved that size matters. Arcimedes would probably have had many able and willing hands to help him align the mirrors. Also, if his helpers were trained soldiers as one would expect when defending a city, they would be discplined. They could quickly follow orders to align a multitude of mirrors simultaneously.
The MythBusters experiment was small in scale and had relatively little manpower behind it. Even the experiment detailed in the article stated they would have been more effective if the helpers had been better trained and disciplined. Archimedes would have been more likely to have had the large disciplined workforce required to make his creation effective.
To be fair: They weren't trying to say it couldn't be done, they were trying to prove whether or not it could have been built with the tools available at the time. That's why it was a 'poor approximation of a parabolic mirror'.
The MIT team also built a poor approximation of a parabolic mirror too...
Next we will see that Mythbusters say that Stonehenge could not have been built with the tools of the time, or the Great Piramids....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
They run these unscientific experiments (most involving explosions or decaying corpses) and then "conclusively bust" myths. Some experiments are fun and interesting, but most don't deserve the hard conclusions they assign.
It's really annoying when people take accept their "proofs" as proofs.
Yep, but as ohters have said, the greeks used slave labour for their construction/manufacturing and therefore had little incitement to invent other things than warmachines (greek fire, imagine a giant roman candle) and toys (as in this example with 'agitated air' as he called it as far as i remember).
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.
you seem to forget that this Archimedes guy had more funds and manpower at his disposal then ten "very promising" undergrads. Also keep in mind that Archimedes by this point in his career was well beyond his first four years in college - he actually had experience to draw on.
Something like only needs to be used once to be effective. After that, the mere idea that it exists is a deterrent. Two other examples of this working:
1) The ancient Israelites carried a large gilded box called the Ark of the Covenant in front of them into battle. They believed it could summon up the wrath of God on their enemies. Their enemies were not 100% sure that the Israelites weren't right. There is no evidence that the Ark ever actually did summon up the wrath of God, but boths sides beleived it and the Israelites beat enemies who had superior numbers on a number of occasions.
2) How many atomic bombs were actually ever used? Two. But the mere thought that a country has nuclear weapons gives them a bargaining position. And the the fact that the wrong country even MIGHT be trying to obtain them is reason to go to war.
In the ancient world, this "death ray" would have struck fear in the enemies hearts and minds, despite the fact that it might have serious limitations, or may not even work at all except in controlled situations. And one or two prominant demonstrations of such a weapon would go a long way toward keeping this fear going.
Why would the greeks have tried to set fire to the wood? It would me much easier to target the sails, and they would burn much more quickly. Once the sails are burning, the wood follows. I don't understand why modern people have such problems following logic, and instead have such faith in modern products, and complex solutions rather than simple ones.
... and then they built the supercollider.
I remember a Mythbuster episode where Adam & Jamie try to reproduce this myth/story. They were not able to set a boat hull on fire (they built a replica
I remember that episode, they couldn't set their replica on fire even when they poured gasoline on it and set that on fire!
Adam's credibility was busted, not Archimedes'.
You can't take the sky from me...
There's things about what Adam and Jamie does to "bust" myths that end up being "wrong" and they
bust myths that aren't myths. The chicken gun story is a prime example. They'd "proven" that
it was not possible to have what was described in the chicken gun- but what they did was miss
what the conditions were and didn't test the actual story's premise. When re-done in a recap
story trying to revisit the whole idea, they more closely duplicated the whole set of conditions
and ended up reversing the decision they'd come to on it. The cell-phone story was debunked
but it wasn't debunked appropriately- again they didn't reproduce the conditions. They used
a non flip-phone cell-phone with capacitive operated buttons. No way for the phone to EVER
introduce a spark into an environment. I'm of their opinon on that one- it's a myth, but to
claim that it is off of their test on the subject is bad science.
Don't get me wrong, Mythbusters' is a great show and the bulk of the stuff they do is highly
accurate; but they should never ever be held as a final authority because they're a much
about showmanship as they're about mythbusting and miss many things. The MIT project apparently
shows this situation to be another one of those, "they didn't get the conditions right to
properly test and prove/disprove anything" situations they're guilty of on a periodic basis.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
As an MIT person, I can honestly say I have no idea why anyone would include a course number in their submission and expect it to make any sense to anyone else. But then, people often include random acronyms or other jargon in their submissions that require explanation in the comments - so I don't think it's an MIT-only problem. Just in general, /.ers who either think "Oh, this is common knowledge!" when it's not, or "Hey, I'll show how extra-special I am by using terminology nobody else knows!"
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