But even if he had thought about that before, he would most likely dismiss the idea, because it was impossible to achieve with the technologies in ancient Greece. MythBusters Season 4 Episode 3: Archimedes Death Ray Revisited Summary: Adam and Jamie accepted the challenge from fans mailbags to retest the Archimedes. The weapon would have consisted of either several highly polished mirrors held by troops along the city walls, focusing the sun’s rays on oncoming Roman ships. Romans themselves often used them to start ceremonial fires in temples, and we can’t rule out the possibility that Archimedes really thought about aiming them on enemy ships. Archimedes’ Death Ray allegedly worked by focusing the rays of the sun using mirrors, much like the Nazi’s take on the death ray concept over 2000 years later. One of them was the Death Ray, which was made up of a number of parabolic mirrors. He tried to invent some instruments based on mathematical principles that would help people of Syracuse fight against the Romans. Nevertheless, fire-starting mirrors were well-known by Archimedes’s time. Archimedes was born in Syracuse, which was very prone to attack from the Romans. It was mentioned for the first time in scriptures by Anthemius of Tralles, one of the architects of Hagia Sophia, and then another 600 years later in the Chronicles of the World by monk Johannes Zonaras. According to this story, Archimedes was carrying mathematical instruments, and was killed because the soldier thought that they were valuable items. Greek historian Plutarchos, who depicted many other great inventions of Archimedes in his books, including catapults and special cranes, designed to drag roman ships to craggy coastal rocks, never mentioned the Death Ray in any way. 212 BC during the Second Punic War, when Roman forces under General Marcus Claudius Marcellus captured the city of Syracuse after a two-year-long siege. Even when the Mythbusters tested this myth in three full episodes of their show, they never achieved the desired effect of ships catching fire. ago that became known on the net as the 'backyard death ray' that used similar simple methods and can set fires. Modern engineers have proven during attempts to recreate this feat, that it’s impossible to burn ships with reflected sunlight, even when using present-time technologies. Archimedes was the sun of the sun god :D. One of them, frequently appearing in many famous history books, is a myth that during the Roman siege of the city of Syracuse, Archimedes allegedly burned roman warships by sunlight, reflected by complex system of mirrors.Īrchimedes’ mirror burning Roman military ships(Giulio Parigi, 1600) Among many great deeds we attribute to Archimedes of Syracuse, there are some which probably never happened.
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