[NormsRevenge]

Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor David Wallace, performing an experiment for the Discovery Channels 'Mythbusters,' uses hundreds of mirrored panels to focus sunlight onto a boat in the hope of creating a fire Saturday, Oct. 22, 2005, in San Francisco. According to sparse historical writings, the Greek mathematician Archimedes torched a fleet of invading Roman ships by reflecting the sun's powerful rays with a mirrored device made of glass or bronze. More than 2,000 years later, researchers from MIT and the University of Arizona set out to recreate Archimedes' fabled death ray. Their attempts to set fire to an 80-year-old fishing boat using their own versions of the device, however, failed to either prove or dispel the myth of the solar death ray. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

[CzarNicky]

Mythbusters did it first.

[pcottraux]

Mythbusters did do it first...these guys didn't need to waste their time.

[TheCrusader]

"John Zonaras wrote: "At last in an incredible manner he burned up the whole Roman fleet----by tilting a kind of mirror toward the sun he concentrated the sun's beam upon it..."

I used to watch kids doing this to ants with a magnifying glass. I don't think they were mathmeticians though.

[usmcobra]

I noticed that they always use flat mirors,Archimedes probibly used many small ones that were curved slightly and able to be aimed with a simple sight by a grunt.

[camle]

well you know, now that these guys did thier thing, the case is solved.

conclusive evidence, ya know

[Rakkasan1]

the orgination of the 1st ZOT ?

[LibWhacker]

...he ignited the air from this beam and kindled a great flame, the whole of which he directed upon the ships that lay at anchor in the path of THE FIRE...

So he didn't just ignite the ship, but "the air," along a path from his device to the ship, in a sense the world's first flamethrower. So any modern attempt to reproduce this with magnifying glasses alone doesn't disprove it, imo. You've got to try to figure out how Archimedes ignited "the air" in front of the ship(s).

[SunkenCiv]

I remember a similar test of this tale, I think in Syracuse itself, anyway, in the 1970s. It also failed miserably. Sounds to me like Archimedes screwed up. [rimshot!]

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[SunkenCiv]

Hey... maybe Archimedes created a (reflected) beam of coherent light. Or it could be the whole thing is an ancient tall tale.

World's oldest telescope?
by Dr David Whitehouse
Thursday, July 1, 1999

According to Professor Giovanni Pettinato of the University of Rome, a rock crystal lens, currently on show in the British museum, could rewrite the history of science. He believes that it could explain why the ancient Assyrians knew so much about astronomy. It is a theory many scientists might be prepared to accept, but the idea that the rock crystal was part of a telescope is something else. To get from a lens to a telescope, they say, is an enormous leap. Professor Pettinato counters by asking for an explanation of how the ancient Assyrians regarded the planet Saturn as a god surrounded by a ring of serpents?

[Jet Jaguar]

http://www.passcal.nmt.edu/~bob/passcal/fact/index.htm

[Tijeras_Slim]

[RightWhale]

Archimedes was the premier war architect of his day. A bunch of kids think they are going to top the master, or even duplicate his work? Refutes the idea that social evolution is necessarily progress or even racetrack progress.

[Vicomte13]

San Francisco weather in October is not the same thing as the Mediterranean in midsummer.

Do the same test in TEXAS or FLORIDA - that's about where Southern Italy, Sicily and Greece are - and do it in August on a blazing hot day. And aim the rays at the sails. Oh, and in the ancient world they made things huge. Things are cheap when labor's free (slaves). So make huge polished mirrors (Archimedes is also reputed to have made underwater traps that sprung on ships and smashed them), not dinky ones. And focus all that light like a magnifying glass at the sails...or at the Greek Fire bottles on the Roman ships.
And then see what happens.

The Archimedes' Ray story has always sounded plausible to me.