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		About the Solar Death Ray: The Solar Death Ray is made of 112 mirrors mounted on a platform 4 feet wide and 6 feet tall. Each mirror is a square roughly 3.5 inches on edge. All these mirrors focus the sun to a single spot 5 feet, 6 inches from the mirror platform. A wooden fork extends from the mirror base to the area near the focus and serves as a mounting point for Solar Death Ray targets. The mirror platform is mounted to the support frame on a pivot that allows the platform to be angled. The whole system is mounted on a set of wheels.
		Some Science: The Solar Death Ray works by reflecting the light of the sun from 112 mirrors onto a single spot. Anything in the spot (the target) starts to get hot. The target will continue to get hot until it reaches an equilibrium temperature. When the equilibrium temperature is reached, the object is reemitting as much light as it is absorbing. The reemitted light is infrared light, not the visible light from the sun. The infrared light is emitted simply because the target is hot. The hotter the target, the more infrared light is emitted. There are other details to this effect that I’m neglecting, but you can check that out for yourself by looking up “Black Body Radiation.”
				The animation on the left shows how light from the sun is reflected off the mirrors of the Solar Death Ray onto a single spot. In the real world light isn't so chunky, but the principle is the same.
		The equilibrium temperature is determined (approximately) by how much of the light is absorbed by the object and how much is reflected. A dark- colored object absorbs more light than a light-colored object. For example, a black piece of paper absorbs more light than a white piece of paper. This will cause a black piece of paper to get MUCH hotter than a white piece of paper when placed in the Solar Death Ray. Using some basic principles of Black Body Radiation, I estimate that the Solar Death Ray can heat things up to between 500-600 degrees Celsius (930-1100 degrees Fahrenheit) under good conditions. This assumes that heat is not lost due to conduction and convection of the air around the target, which is unlikely. As a check, paper will ignite at around 230 degrees Celsius (450 degrees Fahrenheit). Because I can routinely ignite paper with the Solar Death Ray, I know it can heat things to at least this temperature. The “output power” of the Solar Death Ray is roughly 1,000 Watts, meaning that 1,000 Watts of power can be deposited onto a target. The time it takes to heat the target can be estimated if you know the “Heat Capacity” of the target.