# Ah, It's An Ancient Greek Style "Death Ray"

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ah-its-an-ancient-greek-style-death-ray/297272>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [April 1, 2005, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ah-its-an-ancient-greek-style-death-ray/297272 "2005-04-01T18:30:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\
**Post date:** [April 1, 2005, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ah-its-an-ancient-greek-style-death-ray/297272/1 "2005-04-01T18:30:29Z")

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[Sadly, the range is rather limited.](http://www.solardeathray.com/)

> [@](#):
>
> 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.

Still, it looks like it’d be a lot of fun to play with.

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**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\
**Post date:** [April 1, 2005, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ah-its-an-ancient-greek-style-death-ray/297272/2 "2005-04-01T20:03:37Z")

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I was thinking about this yesterday… if we add another set of angled mirrors at the focal point to ‘re-parallelise’ the concentrated rays into an intense output beam, then add a third pivoted simple flat mirror, we can direct the beam wherever we want. (I suspect the second and third mirrors would have to be metal-backed to stand the heat, and I’m not sure that a diverging lens in place of the second mirror would survive.)

Definitely would be fun. For sufficiently chaotic values of ‘fun’…