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Often called the father of mathematics, Archimedes was one of the most famous inventors in ancient Greece, and some of his ideas and principles are still used today.
But one fabled device has left scientists speculating about its existence for centuries – the death ray. Now, middle school may have some answers.
Brenden Sener, 13, of London, Ontario, has won two gold medals and an award from the London Public Library for his minimal version of the contraption – a supposed weapon of war consisting of a large array of mirrors designed to focus sunlight and focus it on a target . , as a ship, and cause combustion — according to a paper published in the January issue of the Canadian Science Fair Journal.
The Greek polymath has been fascinated by Sener since learning about the inventor during a family vacation to Greece. For his 2022 science project, Sener recreated the Archimedes screw, a device for lifting and moving water. But it didn’t stop there.
One of the most interesting devices Sener discovered was the death ray – sometimes called the heat ray. Historical writings suggested that Archimedes used “burning mirrors” to set anchored ships on fire during the siege of Syracuse from 214 to 212 BC.
“Archimedes was ahead of his time with his inventions. And it revolutionized technology at that time, because Archimedes was thinking about things that no one had ever thought of before,” said Sener. “It’s a neat idea (the death ray) that no one thought of at the time.”
There is no archaeological evidence of the contraption’s existence, as Sener noted in his paper, but many have tried to recreate the mechanism to see if the ancient invention could be possible.
Miniature death rays
In Sener’s attempt at the ray, he arranged a heat lamp in front of four small concave mirrors, each tilted to direct light at a piece of cardboard with an X marked at the focal point. In this project he designed for the 2023 Matthews Hall Annual Science Fair, Sener hypothesized that as the mirrors focused light energy onto the cardboard, the temperature of the target would increase as each mirror was added.
In his experiment, Sener did three tests with two different light sticks, 50 watts and 100 watts. Each additional mirror increased the temperature notably, he found.
“I wasn’t sure how the results would come out because there were many different results with this material, but I expected that there would be heat increases – but it was not as drastic as I found when I did my experiment in really. ,” Sener said.
The temperature of the cardboard with only the heating lamp and the 100 watt light bulb and no mirrors was about 81 degrees Fahrenheit (27.2 degrees Celsius). After waiting for the cardboard to cool, Sener added one mirror and tried again. The temperature of the focal point increased to nearly 95 F (34.9 C), he found.
The biggest increase was when the fourth mirror was added. The temperature with three mirrors focused on the target was almost 110 F (43.4 C), but the fourth mirror increased the temperature by about 18 F (10 C) to 128 F (53.5 C).
Writing in the paper, Sener said these results were “quite significant because it suggests that light is going in all directions and that the shape of the concave mirror focuses the light waves on a single point.”
Praising Sener for insights into Archimedes’ death ray, Cliff Ho, a senior scientist at Sandia National Laboratories, said the project was an “excellent assessment of the underlying processes.” The facility is an engineering and science laboratory with the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Although the experiment “doesn’t bring anything significant new to the scientific literature … its results were a good confirmation of the first law of thermodynamics,” which states that energy or heat can be transferred, Ho said. The scientist had proposed a conference in 2014 on the death ray, concluding that the idea was possible but that it would be difficult for Archimedes to withdraw it.
Sener didn’t want to light anything on fire, because “a heat lamp doesn’t generate enough heat like the sun would,” he said. But he believes that with the use of the sun’s rays and a larger mirror, “the temperature would rise more significantly and at a faster rate” and “burns would easily occur”.
More theories on the death ray
Every two years, the Olympic torch is lit using a curved parabolic mirror that focuses sunlight into a single point. When the torch is placed in that focal point, the sun’s rays ignite the torch. It is not widely believed that Archimedes only used a parabolic mirror, as it cannot be focused in the same way a flat mirror can.
Archimedes’ death ray is often imagined to be an array of several polished mirrors or shields. However, this theory is often discredited by the idea that ships would move during battle. To ignite the vessels from heat generated by the mirrors, they would have to be stationary and anchored close to shore, said Thomas Chondros, a retired associate professor with the department of mechanical and aeronautical engineering at the University of Patras in Greece. Chondros has studied Archimedes and his inventions.
The Discovery Channel series “MythBusters” had episodes in 2004, 2006 and 2010 testing cases for the purported death ray but ultimately proved the legend to be a myth when all tests failed to light a wooden boat on fire. In 2005, a student class at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, inspired by the first episode of the show, was able to ignite a wooden boat once with a technique similar to Sener’s on a larger scale, but failed on a second attempt.
Sener said he believes that by combining MIT’s findings with his own, the data may suggest that the death ray was plausible, and that Archimedes may have used the sun’s rays with large mirrors to burn to cause. But the technology may not work in cold temperatures or cloudy weather, and the effect of the sea on the motion of ships affects the practicality of this device, he said in his paper.
Despite the limitations to the practicality of the death ray, Chondros found Sener’s project “interesting and well-documented” and the teenager’s experimental setup “could be a basis for discussion for young students, even university students,” he said in email. .
Sener’s mother, Melanie, was not surprised by her son’s choice in the science project. “He was always interested in history, science, nature. … He was always thirsty for any kind of education and knowledge,” she said.
Sener could see himself becoming a scientist one day, whether in engineering, bioengineering or medicine, he said.
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