How did Archimedes use the death ray to burn ships?/30secsofHistory
A 12-year-old eighth-grader from Ontario, Canada, managed to resolve a long-standing historical debate between scientists by proving that the so-called "death ray" designed by the ancient Greek mathematician, physicist, philosopher, engineer, inventor and astronomer Archimedes - really could work.
According to the stories from ancient Greece, the weapon - which supposedly harnessed the sun's rays in order to burn enemy ships - was deployed against the Roman navy and had deadly consequences, but researchers to this day have not been able to understand whether this ancient device really exists.
Our story begins with the Second Punic War, which took place between the Roman Republic and Carthage in the years 201-218 BC. During the siege of Syracuse, where Archimedes was born and died, he harnessed his ingenuity and engineering ability to defend it. The Greek historian Plutarch testified that Archimedes' military inventions prevented the landing of the Roman fleet. Among other things, he built a huge crane called the "Archimedes lift" which was used to grab, lift and lower the Roman ships into the sea. Although the nature of the device is not entirely clear, it seems that it was a crane equipped with a hook that could partially lift the ship so that it would capsize Or you will break falling from the crane. Archimedes also improved the power and accuracy of the catapult, inventing catapults that rained rocks weighing at least a quarter of a ton on the Romans. The
2nd century AD writer Lucian wrote that during the siege of Syracuse Archimedes destroyed enemy ships with fire. Several hundred late Further there is mention in the literature that Archimedes used huge concave mirrors to focus the sun's rays on ships at sea to cause them to heat up to the point of fire.
The historical credibility of the device's existence has been a subject of ongoing debate since the Renaissance, and modern-day experiments have shown that apparently these mirrors were mainly used to dazzle and deter the crews of enemy ships.
In any case, in Greek and Roman history the story of "Archimedes' horn of death", which came out of a device placed on the wall of the city of Syracuse with a huge mirror, was established.
The mirror concentrated the sunlight and created a concentrated and deadly beam of light, which aimed at the body and sails of the Roman ships and burned them.
On the face of it, this sounds logical: a strong enough beam of light coming out of a mirror can burn objects from a distance, but when the physicist and inventor Nikola Tesla announced in the 20th century that he had built "Archimedes' death beam" with more recent and efficient technology, it unfortunately worked less.
Remember the game "Are you smarter than a sixth grader?"
So Tesla would probably fall there, because a 12-year-old boy did what he failed at.
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The "myth busters" also tried to recreate the horn of death and failed:
A number of researchers - including the famous French philosopher René Descartes - dismissed the whole idea as fiction, others tried to recreate the weapon without much success.
In 2005, for example, a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) found that Archimedes' design could set a ship on fire, but it would take 11 minutes for the fire to start burning, with the ship standing still and the sun's beam focused on it.
More on the subject:
the deadliest weapon of the Middle Ages is a great mystery to this day
Then a 12-year-old boy arrived
Brendan Senner Proved Archimedes' Death Rays Worked/Documentation on Social Networks under Section 27A of the Copyright Act, csfjournal.com
With no enemies to burn, Little Snare settled for a version he built on his desktop of that ancient death ray, using a series of concave mirrors and LED desk lamps.
He found that when reflectors were used to focus a 50-watt heat source on a piece of cardboard, the temperature of the target could be raised by 2°C with each additional mirror, up to three mirrors.
Adding a fourth mirror then caused a massive temperature jump of 8°C.
When he repeated the experiment using a 100 watt lamp, he found that "the change in temperature with each mirror was 4°C up to 3 mirrors - and an additional 10°C with the fourth mirror".
"Based on the findings from my experiments, I agree with the MIT group and believe that with a strong enough heat source and multiple mirrors all focused at a perfect angle, creating combustion could be possible," wrote the junior author of the study.
In the end, he concluded that "historical accounts of the use of the ancient death horn are plausible, but so far no archaeological evidence for Archimedes' death horn has been found other than what is recorded in ancient history books and philosophers."
This is what his experiment looks like/documentation in social networks according to Article 27 A of the Copyright Law, csfjournal.com
"Archimedes was so ahead of his time with his inventions and he really revolutionized technology at that time, because he thought of things that no one else had," the boy said in an interview with CNN, "The death ray is such a cool idea that no one at the time was able to think of on him."
Senner's mother, Melanie, was not surprised by her son's choice of the science project.
"He was always fascinated by history, science and nature. He always had a thirst for any form of education and knowledge," she said.
For his efforts and his discovery, Sner was awarded the Gold Medal of the annual Matthews Hall Science Fair, the Gold Medal of the Thames Valley Physical Sciences Science and Engineering Fair and the London Public Library Award for Inspiring Children in Science and Technology.
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