Posted on 02/03/2011 5:15:15 AM PST by numberonepal
Eric Jacqmain, from Indiana in the US, covered an ordinary fibreglass satellite dish with 5,800 tiny mirror tiles - and made his very own 'death ray'. When aligned correctly it can generate a heat spot a couple of centimetres across, with an intensity of 5,000 shining suns, the 19-year-old claims. The inventor then posted video of his invention on YouTube, with people commenting in awe of the power of the satellite. The ray generates enough power to melt steel, vaporize aluminum, boil concrete, turn dirt into lava, and obliterate any organic material in an instant. It stands at 5ft 9ins and measures just 42 inches across. Jacqmain, commenting on YouTube said : 'I drilled a small hole in the dish and glued a piece of PVC pipe on the back. 'Light shines through the hole and hits the translucent plastic on the end of the pipe. All I had to do was aim the dish once and mark the spot. 'As long as the target doesn't conduct heat away too fast it will melt or vaporize just about anything eventually. 'I have vaporized before carbon, which occurs above 6,500 Fahrenheit.' The American teenager called his invention the R5800 solar 'death ray'.
snip
Unfortunately for Jacqmain, his 'death ray' dish met it's own grisly end when it was destroyed in a shed fire. Jacqmain added: 'Yeah. It "committed suicide". It's very likely that it was the cause of the fire...' If there was ever a case of self-destruction, this was it. But Jacqmain's despair at the death of his 'death ray' has simply spurred him on to develop a yet more powerful alternative. 'Plans already in place for the new one, he added. 'The goal is to use about 32,000 mirrors this time.'
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
I still have an old Prime-Star satellite dish lying around in one of my sheds. I just took a look at ebay, and 1/2” square adhesive-backed mosaic tile mirrors are selling for around $15.00 per thousand.
I’m thinking my 9 year old son will be VERY stoked about helping me build one of these things once I show him the video (he is very in to ‘fire’ right now).
Thus, it is possible some time in the next couple of weeks that we will be trying to replicate this experiment. If we decide to go for it I’ll let everyone know how it turns out.
—reminds me of the claim some years ago in one of the “Popular -—” magazines that you could shoot down airliners with a microwave oven-—
That’s pretty cool! It’s kinda like an inside-out disco ball! I happen to have an old PrimeStar satellite dish from about 15 years ago out behind my shed. Now I just need thousands of tiny mirrors, a bucket of glue, and a lot of time to waste.
LOL, of course you did, but nice guy that you are, you left a little for me.
Those were some of my favorite books as a youngster.
Much better than Harry Potter. Potter was lazy kids magic. The mad scientist club used real tools and imagination to create their own “magic”.
Before sealed beam headlights cars used parabolic reflectors. We used to play with them, they will concentrate a lot of heat.
Archimedes goes further back than that! He used the technology to sink enemy ships.
Oops! You beat me to it ... I should have known freepers would catch this quickly!
Not fake, just mathematical. The power of the reflected light is inversely proportional to the relationship between the size of the mirror and the distance of the focus. Notice how large the kid’s dish is, and how close the objects are? You could easily build a solar concentrator to take down a ship provided the diameter of your concentrator is greater than the distance of focus. Of course, then the mirror might be an even deadlier weapon if you just pushed it over onto your target.
42 inches is a little over a meter, so we’ll call it a meter for this exercise. Area of a circle is pi * radius^2, or pi * (0.5)^2, or 0.25 pi. Pi is roughly 3, so area is 3/4 square meters. The solar constant is 1200 W/m^2, so his “death ray” has a maximum power of 900 Watts.
The trick is the focus — 900 Watts over a square centimeter gets mighty hot.
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