Archimedes Death Ray: Idea Feasibility Testing
BevK October 27th, 2005
As long as I’m posting cool educational site links, here’s another.
Archimedes Death Ray: Idea Feasibility Testing
Ancient Greek and Roman historians recorded that during the siege of Syracuse in 212 BC, Archimedes (a notably smart person) constructed a burning glass to set the Roman warships, anchored within bow and arrow range, afire.
The story has been much debated and several attempts to recreate it have been made over the ages. While some attempts have apparently been successful, the death ray is oft dismissed as myth.
TV’s MythBusters were not able to replicate the feat and “busted” the myth.
Intrigued by the idea and an intuitive belief that it could work, MIT’s 2.009ers decided to apply the early product development ‘sketch or soft modeling’ process to the problem.
