Some engineering class tests the whole "burn a ship with a bunch of mirrors" thing, with fairly realistic conditions... and it works! Cool stuff.

Archimede's Death Ray Feasibility Study

Well, there is a smaller version of it at...

Solar Death Ray

His latest victim is one of those bears filled with Honey.

A couple of English scientists did this some years ago.
They went back through ancient texts and artifacs and they discovered a lot of interesting things about it before they give it a try.
Unfortunately I cant remember their names or where to find out about it, but its worth a look it you can find it.

this was done awhile back on (MYTH BUSTERS) a show on the discovery channel...the two guys and thier team built a large mirror out of items and used instructions that could have been found at the time that Archimede lived.. also made a boat with timber and materials as close to the origanl ships used around the time of Archimede.... the boat that they were trying to burn up with THE DEATH RAY got real warm and melted the bees wax caulking but FAILED to ignite the boat into flames..also gave the team a bad sun burn .....MYTH BUSTED!!!!!!!! <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />.... do'nt belive everything you read......vince g. 11b inf......

Uh... follow the link, read the article.

They specifically mention the Myth Buster's episode. This was done as a class project at a University. By an engineering class. With pictures.

That link appears dead. Try:

http://web.mit.edu/2.009/www/lectures/10_ArchimedesResult.html

I havent seen the myth busters do this, but I do know an English scientist lead a team to research and try this.

For starters they found that multiple mirrors were used, and they found roughly how they were constructed and built them and the ship and set fire to it.

Maybe you shouldn't believe everything you watch.

Interesting, although still inconclusive. The big problem is aiming. The article's approach is, more or less, to aim each mirror separately, then cover it up while aiming the others. Hence it took quite a long time, which is problematic when the target is moving and you are in a battle. Maybe it just needed more investment in men and materials - which I believe Archimedes would have had available. (One problem with Mythbusters is that they only spend a few days on each Myth, and have limited resources too.)

Some questions: what's the most number of mirrors you can aim at once, before you become unable to tell which bright spot is due to your mirror? How long did each mirror take to aim? It seems like you could do maybe 5 at a time, and with practice aim in maybe 5 seconds, so 100 mirrors would take 100 seconds, which is perhaps fast enough to be useful.

Maybe Archimedes experimented with the technology, decided it was less practical than shooting fire arrows, and leaked the experimental results to scare the enemy. Kind of what the US did with some of the "star wars" experiments.