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Las Vegas Hotel Vdara an Accidental Death Ray

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the staying-there-next dept.

evanism writes "A hotel in Las Vegas is accidentally designed to be a massive parabolic dish that focuses the suns rays into a death ray! Burns hair, plastic and causes pain." It apparently lasts for several minutes during afternoons of bright sunlight, but if you need to perform science on it, you better hurry since they plan to ruin/fix it.

6 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. Map view by eamonman · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://goo.gl/maps/ZpTd

    So it looks like if the sun is high up in the sky, from probably a S or SSE angle, you'd get some good ant burning action..

    So how would they fix that? Put up one of those porous billboard/shade deals that Flamingo does?

    --
    0- Eamonman Proud member of DNRC
  2. Re:Death ray by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's not a euphemism, it describes exactly what it is. 'Death ray' on the other hand is a dysphemism, coined by bad journalism.

  3. Re:Images by RDW · · Score: 5, Informative

    The article they probably got this story from is a bit more informative - complete with diagram!:

    http://www.lvrj.com/news/vdara-visitor---death-ray--scorched-hair-103777559.html

  4. Re:Post a warning? by vlm · · Score: 3, Informative

    Since the building is basically parabolic, won't the spot stay mostly stationary? I mean, isn't that the whole point of parabolic focusers?

    Try it some time and be surprised. Moving the sun with respect to the parabola is equivalent to moving the parabola with respect to the sun. And there is a strong microwave analogy. So, if the spot never moved, that would make radar systems rather hard to build (you'd have to use 80s era phased arrays instead of 40s era rotating dishes)

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  5. Re:Post a warning? by Facegarden · · Score: 3, Informative

    The simplest thing is to dull the reflective surfaces of the offending parts of the building. This problem isn't unique, it's happened before elsewhere.

    They did that. When they designed it, they thought of this and added a film over the windows that reduces reflected energy by 70%, according to TFA.

    It still manages to raise temperatures by 20-30 degrees in the affected zone, and on a 110 degree day thats enough to melt plastics and people.
    -Taylor

    --
    Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
  6. Re:Same thing happened at Walt Disney Concert Hall by theIsovist · · Score: 4, Informative

    You've given one example, which is a building by Frank Gehry. He's an architect who made his millions by converting software made to develop jet fighters into "architecture". Is it any wonder his buildings attack people?

    I am a practicing architect, so please, let me fill you in. Architects take classes on sun angles and reflected light. Understanding how to make use of and control natural sunlight is a major part of modern architecture. I counter your example with a modern building designed by Steven Holl (a much more impressive architect IMHO). If you note on one of the diagrams, the building has been designed to strategicly filter light into different areas of the school based on certain landmark days. No death rays here.