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 Linkenberger
Male, 18-29, Canada
 1066 Posts
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Sunday, February 06, 2011 10:26:39 PM
"His hand being willing to glance into the "light" shows how wimpy this design really is."
Angilion - "Your statement shows how wimpy your understanding is..."
That and the fact that he BURNED ROCK. With a MIRROR. Let's see you do that. |
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 geckoi
Male, 40-49, Eastern US
209 Posts
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Friday, February 04, 2011 7:36:10 PM
Damn DirecTV is gonna be pissed... |
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 Creabhain
Male, 40-49, Europe
441 Posts
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Friday, February 04, 2011 6:12:13 AM
@Vimto "Ok, now quckly change the range of it as the target moves away."
Run after them! :^) |
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 Vimto
Male, 40-49, Europe
1988 Posts
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Friday, February 04, 2011 3:20:26 AM
Ok, now quckly change the range of it as the target moves away. |
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 unicornsrus
Female, 13-17, Midwest US
44 Posts
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Thursday, February 03, 2011 8:42:45 PM
want |
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 Angilion
Male, 40-49, Europe
9537 Posts
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Thursday, February 03, 2011 6:46:00 PM
His hand being willing to glance into the "light" shows how wimpy this design really is.
Your statement shows how wimpy your understanding is.
The point of concentrated solar power is to gather solar power from an area and *focus it on a much smaller area*.
The key word is FOCUS.
At the focal point, there's a lot of energy. The further away you are from the focal point, the less energy there is and it drops off very quickly.
Close to the mirror array, the amount of solar energy hitting his hand would be little more than the amount of solar energy hitting his hand normally. |
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 pigsnout5
Female, 18-29, Western US
548 Posts
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Thursday, February 03, 2011 2:47:14 PM
yeah i doubt that thing was destroyed. he just doesn't want to be hauled off to jail for creating a WMD. |
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diggierolls
Male, 18-29, Eastern US
152 Posts
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Thursday, February 03, 2011 11:22:37 AM
fake |
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 wellsy57
Male, 40-49, Eastern US
223 Posts
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Thursday, February 03, 2011 10:35:20 AM
His hand being willing to glance into the "light" shows how wimpy this design really is. Quotes such as "bright as 5,000 suns" are only relevent with supporting data. Don't waste your time. Nothing to see here. Buy a magnifying glass, and move on. |
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 Brian 61316
Male, 18-29, Eastern US
744 Posts
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Thursday, February 03, 2011 7:18:59 AM
Well yeah, what I said was much better explained by other I-A-Bers BUT I still think it should have been used for something more practical than pseudo military purposes, hence I want it for a S'more-a-palooza. |
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Brian 61316
Male, 18-29, Eastern US
744 Posts
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Thursday, February 03, 2011 7:10:55 AM
If I'm correct on my optics, mirrors and physics knowledge that there where he can burn wood and suddenly not is the spot where the most light concentrated is; if you step forward or backward a bit it will no longer hold the same intensity or effect. He did make it work but he should have calibrated for it to work from farther away than just a feet or two away from the dish because as is it's really just not practical and can only be used for roasting things up close and personal. Marshmallows anyone? |
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Creabhain
Male, 40-49, Europe
441 Posts
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Thursday, February 03, 2011 7:01:05 AM
I can't believe the guy who thought it was a laser. Everyone knows LASER stands for Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus! You sir, owe the rest of us another Internet. |
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Angilion
Male, 40-49, Europe
9537 Posts
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Wednesday, February 02, 2011 11:59:46 PM
take that mythbusters
Are you trolling or just ignorant and determined not to read anything? |
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 RarLoco
Male, 18-29, Canada
49 Posts
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Wednesday, February 02, 2011 11:00:34 PM
take that mythbusters |
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Angilion
Male, 40-49, Europe
9537 Posts
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Wednesday, February 02, 2011 6:58:45 PM
The "tower of power" CSP approach also leads to unusually pretty power stations:
That's the first stage/test facility at Seville, in Spain. It's not just a test facility - it feeds 20MW into the grid, which is enough for much of the needs of the town nearby.
That's an unedited photo - the rays of light are genuinely there. They're caused by the focused solar energy interacting with dust in the air on its way from the mirrors to the heating tank near the top of the tower.
It's about efficiency. Parabolic troughs are easy and cheap, but you only get ~15%. Stirling engines are more expensive, but will get you 40% and therfore need less area. Solar towers potentially require less area still and potentially have lower generating costs, but they're in development and have high build costs.
All the methods are currently in commercial use up to 100MW, to see |
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Angilion
Male, 40-49, Europe
9537 Posts
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Wednesday, February 02, 2011 6:35:31 PM
There's another side-effect of CSP that would be useful in some circumstances - agriculture.
With some designs, it's possible to grow plants in shaded areas behind/under the mirrors.
So if you have a hot desert area near a sea (and a fair few places do), you could use a CSP power plant to generate electricity, purify and desalinate seawater to make drinking water and irrigation water for crops growing behind/under the mirrors.
Power, food and water all in one go.
It's not a panacea, but it's a useful option in some areas. For example, there's a plan to supply 20% of the electricity needs of Europe, Britain and Ireland from CSP in northern Africa. A detailed plan, using only currently existing technology.
The scale is similar in the USA, using the southern states. It would work well there, too. |
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Angilion
Male, 40-49, Europe
9537 Posts
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Wednesday, February 02, 2011 6:25:38 PM
Why are there a dozen people talking crap about this proving Mythbusters wrong *after* it's already been explained why it doesn't?
It isn't even a similar experiment, unless you believe that the mirrors on this dish are being held in place by teeny-tiny little people. |
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Angilion
Male, 40-49, Europe
9537 Posts
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Wednesday, February 02, 2011 6:23:03 PM
I was not aware that that CSP arrays were already in use to generate electricity. Due to the quantity of energy generated, however, it looks to me that CSP arrays make far more efficient use of solar energy than do solar panels (i.e. a CSP array-driven steam turbine would generate more electricity than a solar panel). I am no scientist however, nor to I have the inclination to research this on the Interweb, so feel free to dispute this with data.
On paper it would be possible to just about edge out CSP with the most efficient PV panels in existence.
But you can't, because it isn't possible to make enough of them and the cost would be insane.
A big advantage of CSP is that it doesn't require rare materials or delicate, complex manufacturing. It's viable on a large scale, whereas PV isn't.
You can use both, though - PV uses light and CSP uses heat, so they don't necessarily clash. |
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Angilion
Male, 40-49, Europe
9537 Posts
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Wednesday, February 02, 2011 6:18:13 PM
Also, is there a benefit to constructing a gigantic CSP array or many smaller arrays? If an array small enough to be handheld can create enough heat to burn through metal, then surely it would also be enough to drive a steam turbine on a smaller scale.
Too small a scale. It doesn't focus very much thermal energy. There's a lot of heat at a very small point - that's not much use for making steam. It would be more complicated and require much more area to generate the same amount of electricity with thousands of tiny CSP power stations than with one big one. All those scaled-down water tanks and pipework and turbines at ground level would put areas in the shade, so the mirrors would have to be spread out more.
The ideal use of area is to have the material heated by the CSP and the water by that material at the top of a tower large enough for a multiple rows of mirrors packed quite closely together to all focus on it, over the mirror in front. |
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Angilion
Male, 40-49, Europe
9537 Posts
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Wednesday, February 02, 2011 6:10:22 PM
@Angilion Could they use a giant Swiffer Duster of some kind instead of water to clean them?
That's the basic idea behind the waterless cleaning systems I referred to (except for the NASA one, which is ingenious, very efficient and very expensive).
There are problems with using just brushes and dusters - the brushes and dusters don't clean as well as water and they get dusty themselves. There's a *lot* of surface area in the mirrors of a commercial scale CSP power plant. If you're dusting 1000m^2 of mirror with a hot, dry duster in a hot, dry desert, you're going to get a lot of dust on the duster pretty quickly.
It's not an impossible problem, but there's plenty of scope for improvement. |
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 defiythelie
Male, 18-29, Midwest US
232 Posts
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Wednesday, February 02, 2011 4:27:54 PM
Lame, I can melt rocks with my $35 fresnel lens! |
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Gompers
Male, 13-17, Eastern US
59 Posts
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Wednesday, February 02, 2011 4:19:58 PM
Someone send this video to the mythbusters. This man did what the couldn't. |
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 Quackor
Male, 18-29, S. America
2665 Posts
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Wednesday, February 02, 2011 12:55:18 PM
theres an actual version done by an university, its possible to do it, but requires precise alignment of the mirrors, by looking at the close-up of the mirrors they look glued up by a 4 year old, so i call fake on this version |
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retardedass
Male, 13-17, Europe
3 Posts
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Wednesday, February 02, 2011 11:35:16 AM
I wonder what happens when he puts his hand there :D |
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 fivezones
Male, 40-49, Western US
1028 Posts
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Wednesday, February 02, 2011 9:00:13 AM
Military gonna develop this I bet. A bigger version or something |
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