Solar death ray (this thing is awesome)

This is the greatest thing on the Internet since nun porn.

www.solardeathray.com

Such a simple, brilliant and yet obvious idea. I hate myself for never thinking about it. I'm definitely going to attempt to make one next summer. Just don't know where to put it.

Wouldn't you want solar death ray?

 

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I've tried making one of those things out of cardboard. Didn't go too well.

Turns out its probably better using a giant plastic lens that doesn't creep like glass.

 

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I can see how that would be problematic. I like the way the guy on the site made his. But I have in mind a different kind of death ray.

I would use smaller mirrors, but a lot more of them, so the beam would be smaller, but way too bright and powerful. I would have the focal point be about 5 feet away from the mirror array. I would mount another mirror precisely at the focal point in a way so I can control where the beam goes. Wow.. a lot of potential fun to be had with a setup like that.

 

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Awesome!

 

Have you guys read the deatails:
"The Solar Death Ray is made of 112 mirrors mounted on a platform 4 feet
wide and 6 feet tall. Each mirror is a square roughly 3.5 inches on edge. All
these mirrors focus the sun to a single spot 5 feet, 6 inches from the mirror
platform. A wooden fork extends from the mirror base to the area near the
focus and serves as a mounting point for Solar Death Ray targets. The
mirror platform is mounted to the support frame on a pivot that allows the
platform to be angled. The whole system is mounted on a set of wheels.

The Solar Death Ray works by reflecting the light of the sun from 112
mirrors onto a single spot. Anything in the spot (the target) starts to get
hot. The target will continue to get hot until it reaches an equilibrium
temperature. When the equilibrium temperature is reached, the object is
reemitting as much light as it is absorbing. The reemitted light is infrared
light, not the visible light from the sun. The infrared light is emitted simply
because the target is hot. The hotter the target, the more infrared light is
emitted. There are other details to this effect that I’m neglecting, but you
can check that out for yourself by looking up “Black Body Radiation.”

In other words, the guy doesn't even know what he's talking about: "check out the other details by looking up "black body radiation." How are you going to assemble 112 mirrors to accurately pinpoint a light source, and even if you could, why would you want to do so? A laser would be much more efficient.

 

Would you give us a link for that so we can make a direct comparison, please.

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Wow, a magnifying glass in essence, how new.

 

I seem to recall they made something like this on Mythbusters, but it never worked the way they expected it to--myth busted!

 

I remember that.

 

I'd use some trig maybe some borrowed angle measuring tools. I suppose missing a little wont make much of a difference its not like I'd use it to defend earth from an invading race of honey bears.

Is why.

I have a broken mirror I can cut up into smaller pieces but as of yet no laser parts.

 

Valich:

Considering everything humans having proven themselves capable of, you seriously think that's a significant obstacle?!

Why would you want to do it? Because it's novel, simple and elegant and has an only requirement of an obvious and abundant energy source: the sun. And science nerds/geeks love that kind of shit.

Lasers are dumb.

 

Hmm...I feel the sudden need to make a maser.

 

Some advice: don't try to make smooth parabolic surfaces like the laboratory-polished ones out of household materials. It's back-breaking work, and will most likely fail.

Small mirrors will probably work better, but I'll need to salvage a junkyard for those.

 

it doesnt work... as tablariddim said, mythbusters made a much better deathray then the one on the site, and it heated up the target by a hundred degrees or so... which isnt going to do anything

 

Or Does It?

http://physics.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://web.mit.edu/2.009/www/lectures/10%5FArchimedesResult.html

Leave it to MIT to prove these things...

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Of course this would work, there have already been scaled up versions that harvest solar energy to heat a central boiler, but in that case there is a whole field of electronically controlled mirrors that move with the sun.

Imaging a whole army of people, each aiming their own mirror towards a target, I'm sure that would work, too.

 

alain:

You didn't check out the site, did you.

Because the author of the site made a gallery of objects that he burnt/melted. So apparently mythbusters didn't make a better deathray if they only got theirs to heat the target up to 100 degrees. Cause this guy has his going hot enough to burn all kinds of shit. Look at the site again.

 

lybogany:

Good link. Good information. Thanks.

 

"Because the author of the site made a gallery of objects that he burnt/melted. So apparently mythbusters didn't make a better deathray if they only got theirs to heat the target up to 100 degrees. Cause this guy has his going hot enough to burn all kinds of shit. Look at the site again."

unles the site has live video footage of him actually burning something with his deathray, i have no reason to believe that his gallery of objects werent merely stuck in a kiln - dont belive everything you read

 

Well I do hope MIT will provide some deathray footage....

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Alain, surely the MIT project proved feasible, no?