It was said that in 250 B.C., Archimedes was able o set fire to a Roman fleet using a mirror. What kind?

what kind of mirror was it?


i tried researching on the net but i didnt found results saying what kind of mirror he used.? pls. help me on this question

It was said that in 250 B.C., Archimedes was able o set fire to a Roman fleet using a mirror. What kind?
We don;t really know. Even the Mythbusters had trouble replicating this one
Reply:The main principle is that he used a large number of mirrors angled at one point. The small mirrors in a way created a large parabolic mirror. The reason the ship caught fire was because it was lying at the focus of the parabolic mirror. I recommend checking youtube videos under parabolic mirrors to see how some homemade ones look like. I guess Archimedes used something larger and similar.
Reply:It was probably bronze but more likely didn't exist. The mythbusters did a special with a team from MIT and couldn't recreate sufficient results. They also determined it's impossible to set fire to a sail with a mirror because the white color has a high light reflectivity. I think they used like 300 mirrors to set fire to the hull of a stationary ship at less that 100 feet. So Archimedes would have needed thousands of mirrors constantly adjusted to set fire to moving ships at long range. More likely they would have stuck to archers and catapults.
Reply:it was a regular mirror, but it is said it was made in a hexagonal shape as to create a greater focal point of heat energy


this is probably a myth about archimedes, but hey we can still believe what we want to
Reply:check out mythbusters i think they debunked this