# Parabolic dishes and you!

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parabolic-dishes-and-you/348562>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [March 16, 2006, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parabolic-dishes-and-you/348562 "2006-03-16T03:40:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Shammy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ba0ec/32.png) [@Shammy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shammy)\
**Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/parabolic-dishes-and-you/348562/1 "2006-03-16T03:40:32Z")

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After seeing the awesomeness that is [http://www.solardeathray.com/](http://www.solardeathray.com/) , I was inspired to create my own solar death ray. As I was looking around for ways to create it, my favorite way was to use the extra-large dish found at [http://www2.mmae.ucf.edu/~ssd/ham/pics/parabolic/](http://www2.mmae.ucf.edu/~ssd/ham/pics/parabolic/) and filling it up with mirrors, because I had extra cardboard boxes lying around at the time to spare. However, the 100-ish 2x2 mirrors that I can fit on it are not enough. Thus, I came to the SDMB to ask this:

Where can one find a program that would create a parabolic arc in stencils that could fit onto printer paper? Or, for that matter, is there a particularly foolproof way that one can further create stencils by hand? I’m aware that a parabola is equidistant sections between a point and a line, but I can’t really think of a way to do that large-scale and easily. Can any of you supply me with any ideas?