I’ve always been intrigued by the story that the Greek scientist Archimedes used mirrors to focus sunlight on Roman ships and set them on fire during the siege of Syracuse. Is this true, or is it a myth? Very cool question. And one that scholars have debated since at least the European Renaissance. Philosopher René Descartes, for example, rejected the story as a fabrication. More recently, a group of students at MIT tested whether or not Archimedes could have really burned Roman ships using mirrors. On the TV show Mythbusters they used more than 120 one foot square mirrors to focus sunlight on a wooden ship at a distance of about 100 feet. They did manage to raise a flame and cause some charring. But only after the ship had been still for about ten minutes and the sky was perfectly clear.