Archaeology & History

12-year-old builds working replica of Archimedes' death ray

By T.K. Randall
February 10, 2024 ·  15 comments

Historic depiction of Archimedes using his death ray. Image Credit: Autore sconosciuto The ancient Greek physicist and mathematician Archimedes is perhaps best known for jumping out of his bathtub and shouting 'Eureka!' after discovering that he could use the displacement of water to determine the volume of a gold crown, yet he is also attributed with a number of other inventions and discoveries of which some still remain steeped in mystery and intrigue.

Chief among these is the death ray - a device he invented that was reportedly used to set fire to invading Roman vessels during the Siege of Syracuse between 213 to 212 BCE.

The weapon worked by essentially focusing the sun's rays on approaching ships and eventually setting them alight - something that would have proven devastating to the vessels' occupants.

To date, however, there has never been any archaeological evidence to suggest that the death ray actually existed or was used in battle, prompting modern day researchers to attempt to recreate the idea to see if it was feasible for use in such a scenario.The latest budding scientist to do this was 12-year-old Brenden Sener who built a working miniature replica of the death ray using small concave mirrors and LED desk lamps.

What he discovered was that by focusing multiple reflectors on the same spot, the temperature increased significantly, with the rate of increase rising as more mirrors were added.

A similar experiment was conducted back in 2005 by a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) who used a replica death ray to set a ship alight in 11 minutes.

"Based on my experimental findings, I agree with the MIT group and believe that with a strong enough heat source and larger, multiple mirrors all focused at a perfect angle, combustion could be possible," Sener wrote.


Source: IFL Science | Comments (15)

Tags: Archimedes