Melting Steel With The Sun

I could've sworn the Mythbusters busted Archimedes death ray... :shrugs: That's amazing.

that was the 2nd coolest thing ive seen today(i saw some boobs earlier)

That's incredible. And we're in an energy crisis? Funds have been diverted to the wrong places my friends.

the Mythbusters used reflective sheets of copper for the Archimedes death ray, and it didn't work. They didn't have perfectly polished mirrors back then, so it wouldn't have worked.

They revisited the myth later and used a parabolic mirror which was able to ignite a piece of wood in only a second.

Steel glows orange at around 1400 fahrenheit and becomes molten somwhere between 2400 and 2700. DAMN!!!

What I thought was neat was there was no rapid oxidation like you would get from a cutting torch so you got to see the steel flow.

Totally awesome!

Holy crap.

More like holy steel, CheeseDuck! Excellent find, Ali!

Wow! Looking at that metal plate melt like ice is thrilling :P And only with sun power.
Not sure about weapon though... or at least you need a backup for the night ;)

Amazing stuff! I read an article some time ago about a parabolic mirror being used to heat a Stirling engine (which turned a generator). The system generated enough electricity to run an average-sized house all day long and then some; if hooked up to the power grid, it actually would have contributed to the available power. (In theory, the electric company would owe you a little money...) The one drawback I could see with this is the possibility of fire from a piece of falling debris like leaves or tree branches.

The "hot spot" is at the focal point, where all the reflected rays of sunlight converge. Outside of that focal point, the temperature is significantly lower. Therefore, the device would make a poor "death ray". I suppose if the curvature were adjusted so the focal point could be moved, it might be effective --- but I imagine the temperature would become exponentially less hot the farther that focal point was moved from the mirror.

its cool to see James May in something other than Top Gear

Ye gods, that was amazing! Maybe weapons are solar based in the future. Mind you, the sun is shining all the time, we just don't see it in the night ;) maybe some day it's possible to redirect the heat ray (or sunbeam or whatever, english is not my mother tongue, but you know what I mean) to the "dark side" of the Earth with mirrors sent to the orbit. Who knows, stranger things have happened :)

I'm glad all you folks are enjoying this gem of a find! :)

I could easily imagine a company solely dedicated to do this type of thing placing such devices around the globe and using the suns rays to power cities.

You can of it like the solar version of Shell. We're still watching the infant steps to full realization of this power producing method. It's exciting to think about.

And still stand by the fantastical idea of solar based weapons. ;) If anything we maybe able to BBQ food from them!

"Thankfully, all we are doing in our age is using the Sun to power our homes and cities and no one has decided to create solar powered weapons...yet."

This last comment reminded me of that 007 movie "die another day" where some guy built an archimedean death ray" with a satellite.. i think it was called Icarus.

Another piece on the same programme had James looking at mirror farms in Spain which reflect light to a focal point to heat water for electricity generation. I think the one he was looking at was featured in the film "Sahara"; but that one was only 400 degrees iirc.

@dale

400 deg. would be enough to make steam for the powerturbine :)

Somehow I think jesse ventura would think this video is fake. If fire can't melt steel, then there is no way sunlight would be able to.

Careful not to accidentally walk in front of that thing while the shutters are open. YIKES that would be the ultimate sun burn.

I can see it now.
When the Giant Ants from space attack we can use it to fry them. Just like I used to do as a kid with a magnifying glass.

i wish people didn't view myth buster's experiments as the be all and end all of science, they are often poorly thought out, and rarely cover ever anomaly that could come up in the experiment.

there was a British show for the open university presented by Adam hart davis, possibly 'what the ancients did for us' (or one of his other shows) that demonstrated that in ancient times it was possible to have done this using available resources. whether or not it was successfully achieved is another story, but they showed that it was entirely possible. they even went to Greece to prove it.

I wonder what application this originally had other than to burn hot dogs and steel plates.

this is AWESOME!!!! was this a top gear segment?

Very cool indeed, this is a clip taken from an episode (http://www.open2.net/jamesmay/power_to_people.html) of James May's Big Ideas.

@ kid_icarus: Nope - James May has his own science series on the BBC as well. And his own wine series too (with Oz Clarke).

AWESOME!! That is the Sandia Natl. Lab's Solar Tower out on Kirtland Air force Base.
I have only been to that facility one time, and they have the greatest "paper weights" sitting on a desk.
The "paper weights" are "chunks" of different metals they have melted, and used in tests.

Solar thermal technology (check out the wikipedia site) seems to me to be one of the best emerging alternative energy sources.

One version uses mirrors to melt sodium that is stored in a vacuum, which is then flooded with water which creates steam to turn turbines. It uses no feul, so all the costs are in building an maintaining it and current estimates of operating costs are very very low compare to coal or petrolium.

It has its disadvantages, such as requiring very large acreage, but apparently a relatively small portion of the the southern California desert (wasteland) could be used to create enough power for the entire US and Canada.

I'm sure it's nowhere near perfect, but if this video is any indication we have barely begun to harness the power of the sun for use in our civilization.

You should have mentioned that James May was appearing in the clip. I would have watched it forthwith.

I remember seeing one of these super solar ovens in a book about 15 years ago. It was in France if I remember right.

The segment was filmed at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

You should see the BIG solar tower.