I built the first Solar Death Ray during the summer of 2004.
The original inspiration came from Rob Cockerham's
funny site website cockeyed.com. He built a "Mirrored
Parabola," an array of mirrors he hoped would boil water. After
I read his solar story, I started thinking about what I would have
done differently. I built the first Solar Death Ray because I like
designing and building things, I thought it would be fun to have,
and I wanted to see if I could. It was fun to design and build,
and I did have a lot of fun bringing it to parties and barbeques.
But it just wasn’t good enough. While building it, I realized a few
mistakes I had made in the design. When I would show it off to
people, I was always a little disappointed in it’s performance.
Improvements could be made, and so I started the Mark II
concentrator at the end of summer 2004. The Mark II is the one
used on this website, because it’s much better than the first
Solar Death Ray. I had even more fun designing and building it,
and it’s more powerful and therefore more fun than the first one.
After amusing myself and my friends with “Science!” I decided
to share the fun of the Solar Death Ray with anyone who
stumbled across it on the Internet.
left, with the more powerful Mark II on the right.