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Did Archimedes build a death ray? · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the all neween Toyota Corolla. Welcome
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Speaker 1: to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
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Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and Charles W.
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Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant is with me, and Jerry's over there, and
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Speaker 1: this is Stuff you should Know. That's right, The Audio
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Speaker 1: Adventure Hour. Yeah, I'm I'm telling you we need to
0:27
Speaker 1: change our names to the Audio Adventure Hour. Oh. I
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Speaker 1: got to because people would be like, I said it
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Speaker 1: on a recent one and he said, boy, that's that's
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Speaker 1: gonna stick, and now you can't even remember it. Yeah,
0:35
Speaker 1: I have no idea what you're talking about. Which episode
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Speaker 1: was it? I think it was Broken Bones Healing. Oh,
0:42
Speaker 1: that was pretty recent. It just dropped yesterday in real time. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: that's a good one. Yeah, but here we are in
0:47
Speaker 1: October and it's long since forgotten. It was kind of
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Speaker 1: agonizing to like just talking what was it the Green
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Speaker 1: Tree or Green Stick where little kids bones break? Oh? Yeah, man,
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Speaker 1: we heard from a lot of people on that too. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and everybody had a hard time listening to it. Yeah,
1:03
Speaker 1: and we got some pretty gnarly pictures. Yeah, that dude
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Speaker 1: with the staples down his leg and the guy with
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Speaker 1: a crooked wrist like, don't send us this stuff anymore,
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Speaker 1: please stop, so Chuck. Yes, I know you're familiar with
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Speaker 1: the work of economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, the Sackster, but
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Speaker 1: don't I'm don't ont me bore you too much. I'll
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Speaker 1: try to keep it brief. Of course, you're aware that
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Speaker 1: Sacks once said that humanity can most likely reproduce its
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Speaker 1: way out of any dire situation. Global warming, climate change, starvation,
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Speaker 1: reaching carrying capacity, running out of water, all of these
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Speaker 1: things we can paradoxically get our get ourselves out of
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Speaker 1: by producing more people, more people who are going to
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Speaker 1: consume more of these things. And the reason, of course
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Speaker 1: that Sacks is saying this is that the more people
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Speaker 1: that are produced, the higher the chances that some of
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Speaker 1: those people are geniuses. And the more geniuses you have
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Speaker 1: running around the planet at any given time, the more
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Speaker 1: likely those geniuses are to solve the big picture problems
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Speaker 1: that we face. We need more geniuses, So apparently we're
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Speaker 1: all supposed to reproduce more. Um, does he account for
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Speaker 1: all the dummies? Yeah, I guess what he's saying. When
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Speaker 1: you put the dummies against the geniuses. Even the dummies
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Speaker 1: can't on your mind, the work of enough geniuses, right,
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Speaker 1: so one genius can for the undoing of a thousand dummies.
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Speaker 1: But it's like, then you have the idiocracy problem. It's like, well,
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Speaker 1: we need to make sure that smart people are are
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Speaker 1: reproducing too. Oh, I thought you were gonna say a
2:41
Speaker 1: movie based on one joke. I love that movie. It's
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Speaker 1: a cute movie. I thought it was good. It's right,
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Speaker 1: it's worth in for me. Um it didn't. Yeah, no,
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Speaker 1: actually it was okay, but it worth in. Okay, I'm
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Speaker 1: not pooping. Um. Did you like off Space? Yeah? Sure,
3:01
Speaker 1: who didn't? I don't know, I don't. I think everybody
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Speaker 1: on the planet loved Office Space. Yeah, that was a
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Speaker 1: big underground hit. Still is like, it's still part of
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Speaker 1: the vernacular for people to say things like flair and uh,
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Speaker 1: there's always one guy in the office that's talking about
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Speaker 1: it tail right. Every office has got someone quoting office
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Speaker 1: space or he's a straight shooter with upper management written
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Speaker 1: all over. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, so um Archimedes. Yeah, speaking
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Speaker 1: of office space, Well, we're talking about genius, isn't you know?
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Speaker 1: It's something to be a genius now, But when you
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Speaker 1: are a genius, you basically expected to immediately sell out
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Speaker 1: to the man or the government, and your ideas are
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Speaker 1: going to be used for nefarious reasons against everybody else. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: that's kind of how it works a lot of times,
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Speaker 1: you know, like that Matt Damon soliloquy and Goodwill Hunting
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Speaker 1: where he's Yeah, it's probably pretty accurate. Um, there was
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Speaker 1: a time, however, where just being a genius was you
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Speaker 1: could change humanity forever. And you can make an an
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Speaker 1: argument that it was easier to be a genius before
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Speaker 1: because you there was so much to be discovered. I
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Speaker 1: totally agree, But it's still you should take your head
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Speaker 1: off to guys like Archimedes, some of the earliest geniuses,
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Speaker 1: because Archimedes was thank you you just did. Didn't get
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Speaker 1: off my cap. He was somebody worth taking your hat
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Speaker 1: off to let alone. The one thing that's possibly the
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Speaker 1: biggest thing that he figured out was calculating pie. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: so throw the people who can like calculate pie a
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Speaker 1: hundred and fifty places or whatever, just out the window.
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Speaker 1: Just throw him out in the nearest window, people who
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Speaker 1: are standing next to them right now. Because this guy
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Speaker 1: came up with pie originally. Yeah, he calculated pie um.
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Speaker 1: If you don't know who Archimedes is, by the way,
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Speaker 1: he was a mathematician and a physicist and engineer, inventor
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Speaker 1: and all around renaissance man pre Renaissance. Well, let's talk
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Speaker 1: about him a little bit. He was born in two
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Speaker 1: eight seven b c. In Syracuse, Orange, which is a
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Speaker 1: modern day Sicily. Yeah. So he was just an Italian
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Speaker 1: or well that back then it was a Greek city state. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: but you know like Sicily, Sicily, Yeah, you know, the
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Speaker 1: old thing Sicily, Sicily. And he was one of the
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Speaker 1: o g Sicilians, a Syracusian. Yeah, and he lived his
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Speaker 1: whole life there and um, later in his life he
5:33
Speaker 1: would do a lot to try and protect his fair city. Right,
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Speaker 1: So basically he's walking around Syracuse. Is aside from going
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Speaker 1: and being educated in egypt Um, which is where a
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Speaker 1: lot of the early Greek thinkers went to study. Um, he,
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Speaker 1: like you said, lived his life in Syracuse, and he
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Speaker 1: was basically allowed to roam around being the local odd
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Speaker 1: ball because he was so far and he was he
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Speaker 1: played that part pretty well. Yeah. Not only did he
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Speaker 1: calculate pie first, he um worked. It wasn't quite calculus,
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Speaker 1: because calculus wasn't invented, but they might as well have
6:13
Speaker 1: been calculus. He's proofs he was coming up with about
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Speaker 1: two thousand years before calculus was invented, so he was
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Speaker 1: pre calculus and not that classic in the eighth grade
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Speaker 1: that you hated. Um, I shouldn't knock math. I always
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Speaker 1: knock math. I'm sorry, don't apologize to me. I have
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Speaker 1: a lot of hatred towards math. I don't want to
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Speaker 1: school the utes of today, though, Go to take pre calculus.
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Speaker 1: You're gonna love it. Yes, that's what I say. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I don't think you're telling anything they don't already know though,
6:42
Speaker 1: you know, like kids who math appeals to thee I
6:46
Speaker 1: have a deep admiration for those kids and don't progrudge
6:48
Speaker 1: them anything. I think you're born into it. Um. Like,
6:51
Speaker 1: if you're into math and you're a kid right now,
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Speaker 1: you have you're smarter than Chuck and Josh put together. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and you've got a big advantage in life too. Yeah,
7:00
Speaker 1: because your checkbook is going to be that's right. Uh.
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Speaker 1: He came up with the principle of hydro statics displacement,
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Speaker 1: calculating like you're the volume of the human body or
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Speaker 1: really anything. But at first it was a human body
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Speaker 1: because he did it by getting in a bathtub and
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Speaker 1: its spilled over. Let's talk about this makes sense? Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and what did he do when he figured out that?
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Speaker 1: He ran around naked? Apparently shouting eureka, which means I've
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Speaker 1: got it. Let's talk about the story behind us. So
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Speaker 1: there was a king who had a pretty favorable opinion
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Speaker 1: of Archimedes, King Hero the second, I believe, and uh,
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Speaker 1: King Hero came to our comedies. This is a story
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Speaker 1: with a crown that a local goldsmith had made. He
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Speaker 1: had commissioned a local goldsmith to make for him, and
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Speaker 1: the king said, hey, our commedies. I suspect I gave
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Speaker 1: this local goldsmith the gold to make this count, but
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Speaker 1: I suspect that he replaced some of the gold with silver,
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Speaker 1: and that this isn't a pure gold crown. And I
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Speaker 1: wanted to gold crown. Can you help me? You're smart guy, yeah,
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Speaker 1: can you help me figure that out? And our community
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Speaker 1: is just like, oh man, this is a tough one.
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Speaker 1: And he thought and thought and thought and thought for
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Speaker 1: a long time. And it was when, like you said,
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Speaker 1: he was in a bath he was lowering himself into
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Speaker 1: the bath that some water spilled over that he came
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Speaker 1: up with what's called Archimedes principle of hydrostatics, which basically
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Speaker 1: says that um the the an object, the volume of
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Speaker 1: an object just places an equal volume of water. Right,
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Speaker 1: So we have things like airships or not water but
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Speaker 1: fluid which can be water or air or gas, liquid
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Speaker 1: or gas. So we have like airships, a ka Zeppelin's ship, ships,
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Speaker 1: ship ships as yet things that float and don't sink.
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Speaker 1: We can thank our our communities for the math that
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Speaker 1: led to those. But anyway, so he's got this crown right,
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Speaker 1: And it was when he was in the bath that
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Speaker 1: he realized how we could figure out how the crown
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Speaker 1: is pure, whether it was or not. He weighed the
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Speaker 1: crown and then got a bar of gold that he
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Speaker 1: knew was pure that way, the exact same as the crown.
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Speaker 1: He had a cylinder of water or bats of water.
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Speaker 1: He had a receptacle of water filled to the brim
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Speaker 1: with water, Like we said water he drops the gold
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Speaker 1: into is my natural aversion to understanding math showing I
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Speaker 1: feel like it is. He has this receptacle of water
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Speaker 1: filled to the brim. He takes this bar of pure gold,
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Speaker 1: drops it into the receptacle and it just places water
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Speaker 1: just placed his place, right. So now he takes the
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Speaker 1: gold out and the volume of water has been reduced,
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Speaker 1: some of it's filled out, right, that's equal to the
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Speaker 1: volume which produced by the density of the gold of
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Speaker 1: the gold. Okay, so now he's got the gold crown.
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Speaker 1: If he drops the gold crown into this receptacle of
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Speaker 1: water and it brings the water up to the exact
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Speaker 1: level that it was before the gold bar was dropped
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Speaker 1: in there, that means that the density of the gold
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Speaker 1: crown and the density of the equal weight gold bar
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Speaker 1: are the same, meaning that the gold crown is pure. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and that's the key I don't think you mentioned at
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Speaker 1: the beginning was that the gold bar he had was
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Speaker 1: supposedly the same amount of gold as what was used
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Speaker 1: to make the crown, same way, so it should have
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Speaker 1: the same exact density. Now, silver has a different density
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Speaker 1: than gold, so the same weight of a bar of
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Speaker 1: gold and a bar of silver have different densities, which
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Speaker 1: means that if the guy had added some silver to this,
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Speaker 1: the amount of water wouldn't come back up to the top.
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Speaker 1: So it happened who knows who cares. Oh wait, you
10:59
Speaker 1: don't have an ending to that story. The ending is
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Speaker 1: that he figured this out and uh he ran naked
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Speaker 1: to the street shot in Eureka, Eureka. Oh man, Now
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Speaker 1: I have to know was the gold crown gold or
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Speaker 1: was it gold and silver. We're gonna go ahead and
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Speaker 1: say it's gold, because if it were gold and silver,
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Speaker 1: then the king would surely have to slay the goldsmith.
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Speaker 1: And I have the impression that King Hero the second
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Speaker 1: of Syracuse was a fairly benevolent, beneficent, beneficent king. Hold on,
11:30
Speaker 1: before we're go any further, what do you think about
11:32
Speaker 1: a message break? That's great? Alright, so our comedian has
11:41
Speaker 1: done talking for the rest of the podcast. No, you're not.
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Speaker 1: He Uh so he was a smart guy, that's what
11:46
Speaker 1: that story equals. Yes, he um he was. He was
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Speaker 1: an inventor, but he was more than inventor in my opinion.
11:55
Speaker 1: He was a modifier of inventions. Like he didn't invent
11:59
Speaker 1: the catapult old, but he made the catapult into a
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Speaker 1: variable range weapon instead of a fixed range weapon, much
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Speaker 1: more useful. Yes, he didn't invent um the water screw.
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Speaker 1: He didn't been in the water screw. I think didn't
12:14
Speaker 1: he Apparently it's an Egyptian really thing that he found
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Speaker 1: an improved Okay, well, good for him, though I'm not
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Speaker 1: saying that like, well they call it our comedes screw.
12:23
Speaker 1: Well yeah, ever, the impression he wouldn't have called it that.
12:27
Speaker 1: I don't think he was much of a self promoter.
12:29
Speaker 1: He was a producer, you think, so, yeah, he just
12:31
Speaker 1: got the work done, alright. So eventually his his tinkering
12:36
Speaker 1: and his obsession, like he would get really fixated on
12:38
Speaker 1: his work, would lead to his death. Um. Although he
12:42
Speaker 1: was old. He was seventy five, and uh, that's got
12:45
Speaker 1: to be old for that age. Oh sure before the commentary, Yeah,
12:50
Speaker 1: heck yeah, he was really old. Uh. And a Roman soldier.
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Speaker 1: I've seen varying accounts of this story, um, but the
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Speaker 1: gist of it is is that a Roman soldier came
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Speaker 1: in and said, hey, you need to go meet with
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Speaker 1: General Marcellus, because Marcellus we're in charge here now. Marcellus
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Speaker 1: wants to meet with you. Um. He's got a briefcase,
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Speaker 1: uh and a mysterious band aid on the back of
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Speaker 1: his neck. Um. And so he goes in there and
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Speaker 1: he says, you know, General Marcellus wants to meet with you.
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Speaker 1: And Archimedes was in the middle of uh his math,
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Speaker 1: basically trying to come up with some new proofs, you know,
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Speaker 1: like he's creating a geometric proof or something, right, And
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Speaker 1: he was in the middle of it. Yeah, and he
13:29
Speaker 1: had drawn this on the floor. It was all drawn out,
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Speaker 1: and um, one account I saw what he said. No,
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Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm too busy. I can't go see him now.
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Speaker 1: And the guy got angry and killed him with a sword.
13:41
Speaker 1: You found that he was beaten to death. Either way,
13:45
Speaker 1: he died, but he had said something along the lines
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Speaker 1: of don't disturb my circles, very dismissively to this Roman soldier,
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Speaker 1: which pissed him off. Yeah, and so the Roman soldier
13:53
Speaker 1: killed him one way or another exactly. And apparently, um,
13:56
Speaker 1: the Roman soldier didn't realize who he was. Well, No,
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Speaker 1: General of Marcellus was not too happy, no, because he
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Speaker 1: wanted to use him. Yeah, our comedies was very well
14:04
Speaker 1: known around this area. Um. And the whole reason that
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Speaker 1: a Roman soldier was even in our comedies's house in
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Speaker 1: the first place was because they were besieging and had
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Speaker 1: been besieging Syracuse for two years. Two full years. Well, yeah,
14:20
Speaker 1: they Syracuse was surrounded by a sixteen mile wall, so
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Speaker 1: it was very fortified city, right, So it wasn't the
14:27
Speaker 1: kind of place you could just waltz in and siege,
14:29
Speaker 1: right like this will be an afternoon siege. It was
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Speaker 1: a two year siege. So here's the weird thing. For
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Speaker 1: about fifty years of King Hero the second reign Um,
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Speaker 1: this city state, the Greek city state of Syracuse, allied
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Speaker 1: itself with Rome. Everything was fine, it was a time
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Speaker 1: of peace. The Romans were, you know, pretty much conquering
14:51
Speaker 1: the world at the forefront of everything, yeah, and taking
14:54
Speaker 1: care of their friends, including Syracuse. But um, King Hero's
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Speaker 1: successor has son Um decided to go and allie Syracuse
15:04
Speaker 1: with Carthage. The general Hannibal had recently had some pretty
15:08
Speaker 1: good victories and it caught the attention of Hero's successor,
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Speaker 1: and as a result that his successor was assassinated in
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Speaker 1: like thirteen months, and there's a lot of civil strife
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Speaker 1: that kind of came about as a result of this.
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Speaker 1: Syracuse was divided. We should allie with Carthage, we should
15:24
Speaker 1: a lie with Rome. Well, whatever the case was, there
15:29
Speaker 1: complete alliance to Rome had been shattered, and Rome sent
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Speaker 1: General Marcellus to negotiate at first, I guess, to get
15:37
Speaker 1: them back on their side. And when negotiations failed, he
15:40
Speaker 1: started to attack the city. And when he attacked the city,
15:44
Speaker 1: Archimedes war machines were unleashed upon the Romans. Well. Yeah,
15:48
Speaker 1: they went to Archimedes and they said, you're a smart guy.
15:51
Speaker 1: Can you figure out some it's some innovative ways to
15:54
Speaker 1: thwart these people? And he said, hey, it's no problem,
15:59
Speaker 1: you know. Uh So one of the things he came
16:02
Speaker 1: up with, and I love his warp machines because it's
16:04
Speaker 1: just kind of cool stuff. It's all like back in
16:07
Speaker 1: that day, it was all very practically oriented with pulleys
16:11
Speaker 1: and levers and things. You know. It wasn't like you know,
16:15
Speaker 1: nuclear fission's like, hey, let me think how I can
16:17
Speaker 1: use these drop these big heavy things onto people the
16:22
Speaker 1: best with the with the people that I have at
16:25
Speaker 1: my disposal, which is a lot of people. Uh. One
16:28
Speaker 1: My favorite thing was the iron hand or the iron
16:30
Speaker 1: Archimedes claw. Uh. This was basically it's like a large
16:35
Speaker 1: lever with a grappling hook um and that would hang
16:40
Speaker 1: uh uh flush with the walls. So they wouldn't see it,
16:45
Speaker 1: you know. And then when the ships would come into
16:48
Speaker 1: the harbor, they would swing this thing out. They would
16:51
Speaker 1: lower the boom literally and this grappling hook would attach
16:55
Speaker 1: onto the front of a ship or any part of
16:57
Speaker 1: the ship would be great, and they would have all
16:59
Speaker 1: these people and oxen and things that would immediately yank
17:03
Speaker 1: it up and basically yank these ships either in half
17:06
Speaker 1: or tip them over and capsize them, or drop them
17:09
Speaker 1: in the front end out of the water and then
17:11
Speaker 1: release it and then drop it back in the water
17:13
Speaker 1: where the boat would break or capsize right exactly, and
17:15
Speaker 1: the the sailors would be shaken off. And these are
17:18
Speaker 1: big ships. Supposedly, Um, they were called quinn Querines. Yeah,
17:23
Speaker 1: that was the ship of the day. Yeah, And those
17:25
Speaker 1: things weighed about a hundred metric tons and um, like
17:28
Speaker 1: four dudes on these things were not small. They weren't small.
17:31
Speaker 1: And there was supposedly this giant iron claw that could
17:34
Speaker 1: pick them up and shake the people off and then
17:37
Speaker 1: throw the ship back into the seat. And they think
17:40
Speaker 1: that it was probably balanced with the counterweight rather than
17:43
Speaker 1: say like pulice, which some accounts have it as um
17:47
Speaker 1: because the counterweight would be it would balance out the
17:50
Speaker 1: weight of this huge arm and the claw um, meaning
17:54
Speaker 1: that just a few people could move it up and
17:57
Speaker 1: down inside to side when they needed to because the
17:59
Speaker 1: bull because the way it was countered. And again, he
18:02
Speaker 1: didn't invent this, but he modified existing things to make
18:08
Speaker 1: war machines. Basically. Uh, And we should say it's entirely
18:12
Speaker 1: possible the iron hand or iron claw didn't exist or
18:17
Speaker 1: existed in some less fantastic fashion less um less James
18:23
Speaker 1: West fashion um. But it's possible and probable even that
18:29
Speaker 1: it was. There was something like that that was used
18:32
Speaker 1: during the Siege of Syracuse. Yeah. That's the coolest things
18:35
Speaker 1: to me is that this stuff, this is so long
18:37
Speaker 1: ago that we don't have the great records, so there's
18:39
Speaker 1: a lot of speculation of how he did it. It's
18:43
Speaker 1: just like how the pyramids built. You know. It's kind
18:45
Speaker 1: of fun to sit around and tease your brain with
18:47
Speaker 1: that stuff or build these things like Discovery Channel did
18:52
Speaker 1: on their show super Weapons of the Ancient World. They
18:54
Speaker 1: built an iron hand. Did it work? Heck yeah, I
18:57
Speaker 1: did nice. I mean it's not it's very basic. It's like,
19:00
Speaker 1: let me lower this big hook onto your ship and
19:02
Speaker 1: use a lot of force to pull it up and
19:03
Speaker 1: then drop it. It's like the claw that you used
19:07
Speaker 1: to like win stuff at the bowling alley out of
19:09
Speaker 1: those machines. Uh, well, an upside down version of that. Oh,
19:14
Speaker 1: is it like a it's a hook. Yeah, it's a
19:16
Speaker 1: grappling hook. Okay, but the nomenclature of the day that
19:20
Speaker 1: was called a claw, I got you. Yeah, okay, So
19:22
Speaker 1: let's take another a little second for a message break. Okay,
19:30
Speaker 1: all right, so let's get back to it. So you
19:32
Speaker 1: have the iron claw that was probably for real and
19:35
Speaker 1: used against Rome because it was mentioned several times by um,
19:39
Speaker 1: not necessarily contemporary historians, but Plutarch mentions it in Plutark
19:45
Speaker 1: did a lot of the historical recording of the day
19:49
Speaker 1: for our comedies, but it was about two fifty years
19:51
Speaker 1: after our comedies lived. Um, there was another one that
19:57
Speaker 1: was pretty cool. May not have existed, but it was possible,
20:03
Speaker 1: and it's called Archimedes death ray. Cool name. It's a
20:06
Speaker 1: great name, the greatest name for a weapon ever, probably
20:09
Speaker 1: our comedies death ray. What about a band name. I'm
20:12
Speaker 1: sure that someone has taken that one in, don't you think, Yeah,
20:17
Speaker 1: there's an Archimedes death right out there. Okay, alright, fine,
20:20
Speaker 1: our comedies deathrays taken. It's got to be. But it
20:23
Speaker 1: is a cool thing. The thing is is it's not mentioned.
20:26
Speaker 1: It's mentioned a couple of times by some historians, even
20:31
Speaker 1: a A a couple that are fairly close who wrote
20:38
Speaker 1: fairly close after the Siege of Syracuse. Well, now, what's
20:41
Speaker 1: considered fairly close a couple hundred years, so Galen does
20:45
Speaker 1: not vol into that category about three fifty years after. Okay,
20:50
Speaker 1: so let's say Galen mentions it, but he doesn't call
20:54
Speaker 1: anything a death ray obviously. He he basically says, um
20:59
Speaker 1: that Archimedes burned ships remotely. I don't remember exactly how
21:05
Speaker 1: he says it, but he just kind of he says
21:07
Speaker 1: that they Romans ships burned from Afar because of one
21:11
Speaker 1: of archimedes weapons, and he just mentions it. It's not
21:15
Speaker 1: until five a d. About seven hundred years after the
21:18
Speaker 1: fact that they named it, that a guy named Anthemius
21:22
Speaker 1: of Trellis, who is talking about mirrored surfaces, mentions off
21:26
Speaker 1: handedly that Archimedies probably used a mirrored parabola to burn
21:31
Speaker 1: these ships. So it was known that Archimedes used something
21:34
Speaker 1: to burn ships remotely. Um. And then it's not until
21:38
Speaker 1: five D that Anthemius says this is probably what it was,
21:43
Speaker 1: and the idea of the Archimedes that's way really kind
21:45
Speaker 1: of took shape from there. Yeah. And if you've never
21:49
Speaker 1: seen one in action, because a lot of people tried
21:51
Speaker 1: to recreate these very successfully. Yeah, there's a that video.
21:55
Speaker 1: The nineteen year old kid in two thousand eleven named
21:58
Speaker 1: Eric Jacques Mayne from Indiana. He built one out of
22:02
Speaker 1: a satellite dish and little discobald mirrorses and uh it
22:07
Speaker 1: worked like man, he could melt stuff and melt aluminum
22:11
Speaker 1: and catch things on fire and he's pretty ingenious. Somehow
22:15
Speaker 1: melted a rock or singe the rock somehow. Yeah, and
22:18
Speaker 1: he said it committed suicide. He thinks it burned itself
22:21
Speaker 1: in a barn, like the sun hit it wrong and
22:23
Speaker 1: it caught the barn on the fire. But apparently he's
22:26
Speaker 1: making a new one. I don't know how he's coming
22:27
Speaker 1: along on that, Yeah, but it's a pretty interesting little
22:30
Speaker 1: video to watch. Yeah. But the idea is that you're
22:32
Speaker 1: using you're harnessing the energy of the sun just sort
22:35
Speaker 1: of like you would have a magnifying glass to create
22:37
Speaker 1: a very small focal point of extreme heat to catch
22:41
Speaker 1: a boat on fire. Right, And this is but this
22:43
Speaker 1: is from reflection. You're using mirrors. The more mirrored and
22:47
Speaker 1: polished the surfaces, the more um genuinely it reflects the
22:51
Speaker 1: original beam of light back. And if you can take
22:54
Speaker 1: him and put him in a concave, uh parabola, you
22:59
Speaker 1: can focus them all to a point, like you said,
23:01
Speaker 1: And when you focus them on to that point, you have, however,
23:04
Speaker 1: many little mirrors reflections focus into a beam that you
23:09
Speaker 1: can use to set something remotely on fire. Now, did
23:13
Speaker 1: they have magnifying glasses at the time. They have mirrord surfaces, No,
23:17
Speaker 1: not mirrored, but did they have magnifying glasses they didn't
23:21
Speaker 1: know they would have used mirrors. No, No, I'm not
23:24
Speaker 1: saying that. I'm asking if they had magnified glasses at
23:26
Speaker 1: the time. I don't believe. So, Okay, it's possible, because
23:30
Speaker 1: my I was wondering, if it's so much better than mirrors,
23:34
Speaker 1: why wouldn't they have used magnified glasses. And my only
23:36
Speaker 1: thing I'd come up with is maybe they didn't have
23:38
Speaker 1: them at the time. I don't know. I don't know
23:40
Speaker 1: how old magnifying glasses are it seems like that's something
23:43
Speaker 1: that would be pretty old. Yeah, you know, I don't know,
23:47
Speaker 1: I'll look it up. Did they have they had glass
23:49
Speaker 1: back then? Right, surely, well if they had mirrors. Oh yeah, alright,
23:55
Speaker 1: So we did a podcast on mirrors. That was a
23:57
Speaker 1: good one. Yeah, surprisingly good one. Remember all the weird
23:59
Speaker 1: little fat x about mirrors. Pretty cool. They're creepy things. Yeah,
24:02
Speaker 1: and the more highly polished, we learned, the uh more
24:05
Speaker 1: energy they can bounce back at you. So that's what
24:09
Speaker 1: Archimedes used. Yeah, if you're using sunlight, sunlight has with
24:13
Speaker 1: a heat energy, so you're bouncing heat energy back. And again,
24:17
Speaker 1: if you use a parabola with a bunch of different mirrors,
24:19
Speaker 1: you can concentrate that heat energy into one little spot
24:23
Speaker 1: and you can hit something and set it on fire,
24:26
Speaker 1: especially a wooden romanship. Yeah, and legend has it that
24:30
Speaker 1: he burned a lot of them there in the Mediterranean Sea. Uh.
24:34
Speaker 1: They were parked anywhere from two hundred to a thousand
24:37
Speaker 1: feet away and he burned them all or not all,
24:39
Speaker 1: but enough to where they were like, we're getting out
24:41
Speaker 1: of here because I don't know what this death ray is,
24:43
Speaker 1: but it sucks. So, like you said, some people have
24:47
Speaker 1: tried to recreate this um. In addition to Eric Jacques
24:51
Speaker 1: Maine Um of Indiana, a group of M I. T
24:55
Speaker 1: scientists created one in two thousand five, I think, and
25:00
Speaker 1: they it was a ten ft version of a Roman ship,
25:05
Speaker 1: just basically like the side of one, made of red
25:07
Speaker 1: oak and um. They used a hundred and twenty seven
25:12
Speaker 1: one ft square flat mirrors arranged in a prebble. And
25:16
Speaker 1: there's video of this on the web too. So it
25:18
Speaker 1: word caught it on fire, Yeah, after ten minutes of
25:22
Speaker 1: sunlight uninterrupted by clouds. But that raises some issues here. Um,
25:27
Speaker 1: this boat was stationary. It was just like basically a
25:31
Speaker 1: a beam of wood was on top of the on
25:33
Speaker 1: the roof of a building and not in the sea. Yeah,
25:35
Speaker 1: and it wasn't moving. So if you are if your
25:38
Speaker 1: target is a boat, it's gonna move in the ocean.
25:42
Speaker 1: It's gonna have some sort of motion in the ocean.
25:45
Speaker 1: And um, that's gonna make the area that you're beams
25:49
Speaker 1: hitting kind of jump all over the place. Well. Yeah,
25:52
Speaker 1: and the whole key to the death ray was you
25:53
Speaker 1: gotta have that fixed. It's got to sit there long
25:56
Speaker 1: enough to heat up. And if it's moving all over
25:58
Speaker 1: the place. It's not gonna be effect although I bet
26:01
Speaker 1: some dudes on the boat as it passed by them
26:04
Speaker 1: were like, ah right, you know yeah, if you go,
26:07
Speaker 1: um the sovereign building, just one building over, it has
26:13
Speaker 1: um a bit of a convex or concave surface, and
26:18
Speaker 1: if you stand where it's reflecting that light, it is
26:21
Speaker 1: way hotter really than just like a foot over foot
26:25
Speaker 1: over this week just on the side one just dangerous.
26:28
Speaker 1: Good check it out. I don't know if it's dangerous,
26:31
Speaker 1: it's uncomfortable for sure. So some other dudes called the MythBusters.
26:37
Speaker 1: Is that I was prounced MythBuster meath Meathbusters uh tried
26:43
Speaker 1: twice in seasons one and three, and both times they
26:47
Speaker 1: declared it busted because they could not recreate the death
26:51
Speaker 1: ray of Archimedes. But again the m I T Group
26:53
Speaker 1: was able to recreate it, and a Greek researcher in
26:57
Speaker 1: that's the one to me because he actually did that
26:59
Speaker 1: on a boat in the water. Yeah, he he set
27:02
Speaker 1: some rowboats that were on the water or a robot
27:04
Speaker 1: on fire. But the way he got around the motion
27:07
Speaker 1: in the ocean was he used like fifty soldiers. He
27:11
Speaker 1: had live mirrors. Yeah, that could just adjust their position
27:15
Speaker 1: slightly to make up for the the ocean's emotion. That's
27:18
Speaker 1: pretty good idea. You got how many guys, fifty dudes
27:23
Speaker 1: with five ft by three ft mirrors? And I mean
27:26
Speaker 1: that's about the simplest way to recreate this. You don't
27:28
Speaker 1: have to build something. You just gotta have a lot
27:31
Speaker 1: of mirrors and a lot of people. Yeah, and some time, right,
27:35
Speaker 1: and that's fine, and a Sicilian army that's not doing
27:37
Speaker 1: a whole lot, right then, I guess they weren't. So
27:40
Speaker 1: it is very possible for our committee's death ray to
27:44
Speaker 1: have existed, or for it to have worked. Whether it
27:49
Speaker 1: existed or not is highly unlikely. Here's some reasons. Ready,
27:55
Speaker 1: it was never used again. That's my biggest like sticking
27:58
Speaker 1: point is if it was a death ray and it
28:01
Speaker 1: worked so well, why didn't they ever use it again?
28:04
Speaker 1: Another point, a lot of historians wrote about the Siege
28:07
Speaker 1: of Syracuse, they mentioned the iron claw, different historians. Nobody
28:12
Speaker 1: mentions the death ray until seven years after it's another
28:17
Speaker 1: sticking point. Could have been a h artistic license at work.
28:21
Speaker 1: Maybe could have been um. Another thing is that even
28:24
Speaker 1: if it had been deployed in the field during the siege, Uh,
28:29
Speaker 1: Romans ships all had firefighters aboard, and they wouldn't have
28:32
Speaker 1: been too terribly threatened by something that caused like a
28:35
Speaker 1: smoldering fire that they could easily get to and put out.
28:38
Speaker 1: All you had to do is splash some water on
28:40
Speaker 1: that area and it would just completely undo any of
28:43
Speaker 1: the heat that you've generated in that spot. Hey, Hercules,
28:47
Speaker 1: go pe on that exactly. Hercules, like, I compete on
28:52
Speaker 1: that plenty. That's my hercules and nice. Uh are those
29:00
Speaker 1: all the reasons that they Oh, there's a whole list
29:03
Speaker 1: of them. There's military practical, all sorts of reasons why
29:08
Speaker 1: it probably didn't exist. I'm surprised that some modern military
29:12
Speaker 1: force hasn't tried to do some sort of version of this,
29:16
Speaker 1: you know, like harness the sun to kill. We have
29:20
Speaker 1: missiles and guns, so we don't really need the sun.
29:24
Speaker 1: He had like logs and Trey Boucher's. Yeah, but like
29:27
Speaker 1: you never know what if it was, I'm gonna get
29:31
Speaker 1: to work on it. Well, wait a minute, was it
29:33
Speaker 1: one of the Superman's that like a satellite like captures
29:37
Speaker 1: all the sunlight and then shoots it back. Was it
29:40
Speaker 1: a James Bond. There was some movie in like the
29:43
Speaker 1: late seventies or early eighties where that happened. Maybe Goldfinger.
29:51
Speaker 1: All right, have you to a kill Boy? That one?
29:53
Speaker 1: It's a stinker. It's the best one. Roberts with Christopher Walker, great, yeah,
30:01
Speaker 1: Walking Grace, Grace Slick, No, Grace Jones. Yes, have you
30:07
Speaker 1: ever heard her cover of Joy Divisions? She's Lost Control?
30:10
Speaker 1: And that was good. It's like a like kind of
30:13
Speaker 1: like a reggae dub version of it. It's really good. Yeah,
30:17
Speaker 1: she what happened to her? I don't know? She was
30:21
Speaker 1: an odd duck, Grace Jones. If you listen to stuff,
30:24
Speaker 1: you should know right in and let us know how
30:26
Speaker 1: you're doing. Yeah. I mean the last thing I remember
30:28
Speaker 1: seeing her and was Boomerang Eddie Murphy movie. Remember she
30:32
Speaker 1: wasn't that wasn't She was very funny in that. Actually, yeah,
30:36
Speaker 1: she's she's probably pretty cool. I bet she's very cool.
30:40
Speaker 1: Uh So that's Grace Jones. It's all there is to it.
30:43
Speaker 1: She did exist or did she um? If you want
30:47
Speaker 1: to learn more about Grace Jones or the Archimedes death rate,
30:52
Speaker 1: you can type Archimedes into the search bar at how
30:54
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. And I'm not gonna spell that
30:57
Speaker 1: for you. You're gonna have to figure it out yourself.
31:00
Speaker 1: And since I said search parts time, then for the
31:02
Speaker 1: listener mail, I'm gonna call this uh collagen or weird collagen. Hey, guys,
31:10
Speaker 1: I've been listening to your podcasts about broken bones and
31:13
Speaker 1: you mentioned the bottle role of collagen in the body.
31:15
Speaker 1: I figured to be a perfect opportunity to send in
31:17
Speaker 1: this email. I have this weird and rare condition called
31:21
Speaker 1: Eller's dan Los syndrome e d S. Have you ever
31:24
Speaker 1: heard of that? I didn't. Essentially, it's a defect in
31:28
Speaker 1: the makeup of my collagen. It's almost like my collagen
31:31
Speaker 1: is chewing gum and keeps stretching and stretching and as
31:35
Speaker 1: a result, doesn't hold my joints in place. I've had hundreds,
31:38
Speaker 1: maybe even thousands of dislocations since it first started affecting
31:43
Speaker 1: me badly nine years ago, when I was eleven. Wow,
31:46
Speaker 1: every joint in my body has been dislocated at some point,
31:49
Speaker 1: the exception of my left elbow. Is it painful? It's
31:52
Speaker 1: got to be painful. Wow, we'll find out here in
31:55
Speaker 1: a second. There's no cure for the condition, but my
31:57
Speaker 1: physiotherapy helps as it allows muscles to build up around
32:01
Speaker 1: the joints and stabilize them, thus doing the job that
32:04
Speaker 1: college and can't. My e d S is a lot
32:06
Speaker 1: better now my shoulders only ever dislocate every few weeks
32:10
Speaker 1: or so. Yeah, very tough. It's manageable with medication, and
32:16
Speaker 1: I'm proud to say I've made it through my first
32:17
Speaker 1: year of university despite these occasional setbacks. It would be
32:21
Speaker 1: really cool if you could do a show on e
32:22
Speaker 1: d S, as it has a lot of different effects
32:25
Speaker 1: on its sufferers and it's pretty interesting. Uh. Finally, I
32:28
Speaker 1: want to thank you for providing me with hours and
32:30
Speaker 1: hours of entertainment and information during the long nights of
32:34
Speaker 1: being kept awake by pain. Oh no, it is painful
32:37
Speaker 1: and it's painful. Man, this is rough. I've learned a
32:39
Speaker 1: whole lot from you guys, and you never fail to
32:41
Speaker 1: cheer me up. That is from George in Brighton, UK. George,
32:45
Speaker 1: you're a tough guy. In congratulations, I'm finishing your first
32:49
Speaker 1: year man at college. Yeah, my buddy Dave has a
32:52
Speaker 1: shoulder that dislocates quite a bit, or not quite a bit,
32:56
Speaker 1: but it happened five or six times since I've known him.
33:00
Speaker 1: Like George's not like George. Every couple of weeks is
33:03
Speaker 1: good for George. Yeah, hats off to you, George. Heck yeah,
33:06
Speaker 1: uh maybe we will do an E D Yester morn.
33:08
Speaker 1: We have to look it up. If you want to
33:11
Speaker 1: tell us about a condition you have and ask us
33:13
Speaker 1: to do a podcast on it, there's nothing wrong with that.
33:17
Speaker 1: You can tweet to us at our Twitter handle it's
33:19
Speaker 1: a s y s K podcast. You can hang out
33:22
Speaker 1: with us on our Facebook page. That would be Facebook
33:25
Speaker 1: dot com slash w Should Know. You can send us
33:27
Speaker 1: an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and
33:31
Speaker 1: you can check out our super awesome website called stuff
33:34
Speaker 1: you Should Know dot com. Brought to you by the
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