Who is this boy?
Brenden Sener is a 13-year-old boy from Ontario, Canada. For his school’s science fair project, Brenden built a really cool mini version of Archimedes’ Death Ray.
Death ray? What’s that?
A death ray is a fictional weapon that can shoot really powerful energy beams, causing lots of destruction.
Sounds unreal, right? It is said that Archimedes, a famous ancient Greek inventor, created a device named the Archimedes Death Ray.
How did the Archimedes Death Ray work?
It used many large curved mirrors to direct sunlight on one spot, making it extremely hot and setting it on fire. It's like using a magnifying glass to burn a piece of paper with sunlight.
Some stories say it was used to burn Roman ships in battles. But there’s no proof this death ray ever existed. People also question whether it would work in reality.
Brenden Sener’s science fair project shows Archimedes’ Death Ray could work.
Did Brenden burn ships?
Nope! The kid created a tiny version of the death ray. He conducted his experiment using a bulb, four small curved mirrors, and cardboard.
As the mirrors focused the lamp's light on a marked spot on the cardboard, the spot’s temperature rose with the addition of each mirror.
But Brenden did not want to set anything on fire, just to prove that it could be possible with big enough mirrors and sunlight instead of a heating lamp.
Still, making such a device would be impractical as it would be massive in size and difficult to use. But it’s a cool idea that is used in many science fiction stories!
