There were several experiments that were accomplished, including an experiment with 500 children aiming mirrors at another fake Roman sailing ship, but this time at an even larger distance than before, 120 m away. For example, flaming arrows are one of the many weapons that could have had the same effect.Ī few years later, MythBusters did the heat ray experiment again in a special edition of the show, featuring Barack Obama’s President's Challenge. When MythBusters broadcasted the results of the experiment, they claimed that the experiment was a bust or 'busted' because of the length of time that was needed for combustion, the ideal weather conditions required for combustion and there was other weapons that could have easily replicated the same effect as Archimedes' heat ray. In order for them to catch the boat on fire, the wood of the boat would have needed to reach its autoignition temperature (the lowest temperature at which an object will burst into flames), which for the boat was around 300 ° Celsius. The same effects happen to the boat as the previous time they experimented. They used a wooden fishing boat as the target for the experiment. The group of students from MIT repeated this same experiment on the show MythBusters. From this experiment, people really started to question its credibility. They also had to wait about ten minutes for a big fire. There were some parts of the ship that were set aflame but this only happened when the sun came out. In 2005, students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, did an experiment similar to the Greek scientist, using square mirrors to focus rays from the sun on a fake wooden ship at a range of around 30 m away from where they were. Massachusetts Institute of Technology & Mythbusters Tar was a usual substance on ships in Archimedes' era. I t was determined later on that there may have been tar on the plywood that could have helped with the combustion. He focused 70 mirrors coated with a copper coating on a fake plywood roman warship from around 49 m away. It was suggested that Archimedes used copper or bronze shields as mirrors to reflect sunlight onto the boat.There was a test of the credibility of the heat ray by a Greek scientist named Ioannis Sakkas in 1973. There was a debate of the credibility of the heat ray in the renaissance age and onward. The device, sometimes called the 'Archimedes heat ray' or even “the death ray” was used to focus sunlight/sun rays onto approaching ships, causing them to catch fire.

Archimedes death ray