Slashdot Mirror
Archimedes Death Ray in San Francisco
Monkey-Man2000 writes "Following the recent demonstration by MIT students that Archimedes' death ray could have been used to burn Roman ships, the producers of the Discovery Channel's Myth Busters invited the MIT team to San Francisco to try their death ray on an 80-year old fishing boat. This time, even with perfect weather, they were unable to set the boat afire. From the article, "Peter Rees, executive producer of "Myth Busters," said the experiment at the Hunters Point Shipyard showed that Archimedes' death ray was most likely a myth.""
I take it as a sign that if Syracuse had the entire MIT instead of one Archimedes, we would not be hearing the story at all. Go Greeks.
So... it sometimes works, but is generally not reliable enough for anyone to bother reusing it. The Greeks lost that battle, too -- if the death ray worked well, they could have just burned everything (at least until the evening came).
The story sounds plausible. Archimedes invented something that managed to set one or two ships on fire (and most likely the fire was extinguished in no time), but was unable to have any strategic meaning.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
"I couldn't do it, therefore it cannot be done"? These guys need to go back to logic 101.
I think most people with any kind of scientific background that watch Mythbusters realize that all they are really proving is that the particular way of doing things that they chose does not work. They rarely if ever prove something is impossible, but they have proven many things to be possible. Given the perfect set of conditions, a lot of things that they say are myths could probably actually have occurred.
What?
As others have mentioned, we don't know what the Roman boats were exactly made of. Was it pine? Balsa? And the tar/pitch used to seal them is very flammable.
The time of day is important; the amount of solar energy hitting the mirrors is highest at noon.
They could have lit the sails, which is good enough when you're trying to set fire to a wooden boat.
Modern boats have paint and all sorts of other goodness on them, which is reflective.
This boat that they tried this experiment on was 80 years old. What does years of sitting in water do to the wood, in terms of flammability? We don't know. How old were the ships that Archimedes set on fire? We don't know.
Now we know that SQ of distance effects the power
No, dissipation of light in air is negligible on such distances, so the power itself is roughly constant. The effect of distance is all in targetting inaccuracies -- having a number of soldiers pinpoint a distant object exactly is not really feasible.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Spreading rumours about Archimede's marvelous machines must have been a pretty good deterrent to invasion.
We cannot build something that compares to the size and accuracy of the pyramids in Egypt, using only the materials and tools they had available at the time. Although we know for a fact they managed it somehow.
Just because we can't replicate it, doesn't mean it can't be done.
C17H21NO4
After attempting and failing to reconstruct the pyramid of Cheops, experimenters conclude that "the fabled Pyramids of Egypt are likely just a myth, there's no way they could have built such a huge pile of stone slabs when we with our mighty technologies cannot do so today."
The Romans used quadriremes at Syracuse. They were at anchor for quite some time, as it was a blockade/siege, rather than merely a naval battle. Most likely the attack with the "death ray" would have taken place well after the start of the siege. My question is why the "death ray" couldn't have been aimed at the stowed sails - I don't think the sails would have been put belowdecks (but I don't know much about Roman naval technology: the best source would no doubt be Lionel Casson's book Ships and Seamanship in the Ancient World ISBN 0801851300 ) - I haven't read it, but Casson's very good on travel in the ancient world, and he knows his ancient ships. On Syracuse itself, I imagine there's stuff in Polybius, but from what I remember, the "death ray" story is late (Plutarch, maybe? Maybe even later?) and we don't know for sure if there's a reliable source lying behind the story. Regardless, Archimedes did engineer various kinds of engines that were used in the siege (cranes, etc.).
Such as? I think Mythbusters is one of the best science-related programs on tv today. No not because all of the shows are done with an exacting precision and logical rigorousness reminiscent of the Cavendish lab, but rather because it shows the core of the scientific method IN ACTION. They have an idea that needs testing, they make a guess at what might happen if they try X, they build an experiment to actually try X, then they run the experiment and draw some conclutions from the results. I can not recall a more apt application of the Baconian method ever being shown on any TV show (save for perhaps Bill Nye or Mr. Wizard or something). Who cares if thier guesses about how precisely the experiment should be set up are wrong, that's (a HUGE) part of science! At the end of the show they usually even discuss where thier experiments could've gone wrong or what might be done better if they tried it again. What more could you ask for in a tv show?! I think it is an especially excellent show for kids to watch. Numerous scientific principals are explained in an accessable and interesting manner (bouyancy, properties of heat and light, mechanical levers and mech. advantage, electrical circuts, flamability of vapours vs. liquids, properties of density, inertia, and on and on). The show can do a great job of keeping them simultaneously entertained with the odd explosion but also teaching the rigorous and logical thought processes necessary for the foundation of a scientific mindset. I really can't say enough good about it.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"