Teenage Mad Scientist Creates Solar Death Ray
- Thread starter vansau
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I don't know any girls who would think it's actually a good thing if you have less fingers, if you catch my meaning.2fish said:
OT: I think my Re-Captcha jumble just spelled out a racial slur. I'm a bit offended.
Notice how close the guy has to hold the object to the dish in order for it to focus properly. It only works from a couple of feet away. Now, he COULD change that by altering the shape of the dish, but aiming all of those things at one point again would be a pain.Baldr said:
I'm going to call this fake. Given the approximate size of the dish I estimate that he'll have at most 1kW to 2kW at that point (based on peak insolation over an estimated 1 - 2 m2 area and assuming there's no losses from the reflections, which is extremely unlikely). Even if we assume that the test tube of water somehow absorbs ALL of the radiation heat (given the transmissivity of glass and water)... there's no way water will boil that quickly.
Also the burn marks seem a little TOO precise. A perfect circle? Seems suspicious given the area of the concentrated light.
My guess? Perhaps a hidden laser somewhere that is masked by the reflections from the mirrors.
Simply put, there's a reason why the Mythbusters failed. As flawed as their methodology (especially the recent episodes) is, there's some underlying basic physics/chemistry at work.
Also the burn marks seem a little TOO precise. A perfect circle? Seems suspicious given the area of the concentrated light.
My guess? Perhaps a hidden laser somewhere that is masked by the reflections from the mirrors.
Simply put, there's a reason why the Mythbusters failed. As flawed as their methodology (especially the recent episodes) is, there's some underlying basic physics/chemistry at work.
There is something called the inverse square law. As pertaining to intensity:Gearran said:
The intensity of light radiating from a point source is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source; so an object twice as far away, receives only one-quarter the energy.
This is why something 2ft away from the mirror could be at 800F, refocus the mirrors at 4ft and they would only be 200F.
1. you don't need that much power. You can already burn holes in stuff with modest lenses. Try it.TRR said:
2. it's all about focus. His mirrors are flat so they never concentrate light at one small point, but instead heat up a larger area. A lens is far more efficient.
Didn't stated in the 1940's he was building a Teleforce (charged particle beam projector) the newspaper media dubbed the Death Ray. It supposed to shoot out extremely high temperature bits of mercury and Tungsten at a target. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleforce
All very interesting indeed, Mythbusters conundrum aside and all. The problem here is that it's not proper villainy!
Your true evil villain death ray is not a parabolic mirror-like device (That's what Yithians use to move their consciousness around, anyway.), but a high-energy particle/photon beam. Because...this particular device - while cool - requires a good deal of fine-tuning to hit the mark, whereas your energy cannon looks and aims as a gun should. Certain designs should always remain in circulation for purposes of practicality, in my opinion.
SCIENCE!!
Your true evil villain death ray is not a parabolic mirror-like device (That's what Yithians use to move their consciousness around, anyway.), but a high-energy particle/photon beam. Because...this particular device - while cool - requires a good deal of fine-tuning to hit the mark, whereas your energy cannon looks and aims as a gun should. Certain designs should always remain in circulation for purposes of practicality, in my opinion.
SCIENCE!!
1. I try it all the time, I have a laser pointer that can do that when it's cloudy. But can a small magnifying lens put a hole in metal and instantly light pieces of wood on fire? Probably not.veloper said:
2. His mirrors are flat, yes, but they are all positioned at different angles, essentially creating a parabolic mirror which does concentrate light at one small point.
3. Again you can't aim a magnifying lens anywhere besides almost straight down.
That has me cowering in fear, just think of the carnage this thing will cause when people give it the good grace of standing EXACTLY 1-2 feet IN FRONT OF THE DEATH RAY because as we all know. Humanity has not developed a projectile weapon that can shoot farther than 2 feet.
He's getting 82W delivered to an area slightly over 1 cm2, which will raise the temperature of 1 mL of water a bit over 20 degrees C in a second, which means if it started at 20 degrees, it would boil in 4 seconds. There's more than 1mL of water in that test tube, but given the size of the tube it's a smaller (~16 mL) variety. However, we're not looking for boiling away the entire test tube of water, just enough to generate steam (localized boiling) as shown in the video. Looks to be about 8s for a decent amount of steam to appear, which gives us some leeway to account for absorption, thermal conductivity, and the unknown starting temperature of the water.reciprocal said:
It's not impossible that they've used a laser, but seriously, if they've got access to that powerful of a laser to have the effects shown on the other example objects, what motivation is there to conduct an elaborate hoax? For the effort to collect and attach the mirrors to the dish and mount it to a wagon, they could instead grab some bricks to build a backstop (so they don't scorch/hole their neighbors' stuff) and then film themselves burning holes in things with a laser! There doesn't appear to be a glut of backyard laser shenanigans uploaded to Youtube these days.
