Eric and His Death Ray
Posted by Melissa Carter at 2/1/2011 8:20 PM 
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: Bert Show Melissa death ray
Categories: uncategorized
Tags: Bert Show Melissa death ray
If this were my son I could see us working on this project together, while Katie Jo hides at the neighbor's house without claiming to know us. But maybe this Indiana teenager wouldn't want any help.
Nineteen-year-old Eric Jacqmain created a homemade death ray. Yes, a death ray. For those who just said cool under your breath, I salute you.
Young Eric used 5,800 tiny mirrors to make a death ray powerful enough to melt steel, vaporize aluminum, boil concrete, turn dirt into lava, and obliterate any organic material in an instant.
He glued the mirror tiles on top of a fiberglass satellite dish and drilled a hole on the back to allow light to shine through a translucent piece of plastic.
Why, you skeptics may ask? To prove how powerful the energy the Sun emits really is.
Too powerful for indoors, I'm afraid, since the R5800 Solar Death Ray as he called it was destroyed in a shed fire by its own generated energy.
I didn’t say “cool” under my breath, I said it aloud! Mr. Jacqmain’s “invention” is remarkable for so many reasons, the least of which is that he took the effort to affix 5,800 tiny mirrors to his "Death Ray" which I'm sure was no small effort. Anyone who has used a magnifying glass to “harness” the energy of the sun has a good understanding of this star's incredible power. I sincerely hope Mr. Jacqmain is considering furthering his pursuit in “thermodynamics engineer”.
Although I am a graduate of Purdue University, should Mr. Jacqmain be afforded the opportunity to attend an institution such as MIT or Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, I say “go for it”! Some of the most valuable inventions (which are now taken for granted) were a creation of inquisitive minds simply “experimenting” or even resulted by “accident”. I realize that Mr. Jacqmain’s invention was small in scale, but such an idea could result in so many “eco-friendly” inventions such as a way to heat homes and buildings thus decreasing the dependence of the U.S. on fossil fuels.
It is a shame that Mr. Jacqmain’s invention was essentially the source of its own demise. However, I would bet he had thoughts of how he could have completed some aspect of the project differently as he was building the R5800 Solar Death Ray. Therefore, I certainly hope the accident didn’t result in his being too disillusioned to build another device which is even bigger and better! “COOL!”
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