Tyson's Blog

My Gleneagle Digital Portfolio

Talons Talk – How does the magnification level (of the sun’s rays) affect the temperature reached?

Hello, here’s the video for my Talon Talk:

And here’s a link to the powerpoint presentation shown in the video!

How does the magnification level (of the.pptx

Next Post

Previous Post

10 Comments

  1. Gyu Min J. June 10, 2020

    Hey Tyson! Great job on the video, I hard a fun time watching and learning! I remember starting a fire using a magnifying glass with a couple of my friends when I was younger, and it was the most mind-blowing phenomenon ever! Glad you explained the science behind it to me.
    I really liked how each part of your speech was concisely written and presented, with great use of text and images all around. The videos you used were also super fitting and provided some cool insight into your topic.
    A quick wish I have for your presentation would be to simply look over your speech and try a dry run a couple of times before you start recording, to improve your flow and keep me engaged with your verbal aspects.
    I also have a quick question for you: Is it possible to start a fire using a magnifying glass but without the sun? What I mean is could you create proficient heat using a magnifying glass and a different source other than the sun? For example maybe a laser.
    Overall, a great job! Now if you’ll excuse me as I take my spare eyeglasses and a wad of newspaper outside for the sake of science…

    • Tyson Z June 10, 2020 — Post Author

      Thanks Gyumin! Thanks for the feedback. In response to the speech, I had most of it pre-recorded into the presentation and didn’t realize till after how large the spaces of silence were. For your question, I’ll have to explain it first. There is a minimum value of Joules per square area per second, needed to heat up a dry material to ignite a fire. As we learned in science, One Joule/Secons is 1 Watt. For a fire to be started, it needs to concentrate 1 Joule in an area smaller than 1mm². A blue or violet laser with at least 1W is able to start a fire. if you use a higher wattage laser, it will start the fire faster. An incandescent bulb of higher wattage would also be able to start a fire, without even using a magnifying glass (the lasers as well). Here’s a video of one! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8MvHrfMuEs
      The one shown in the video has a 12 halogen bulb and 8 x 18650 LiIon cells (3.7V * 8 = 29.6V nominal output). It can’t be bought commercially and would be quite expensive. It also would not last very long (under 10 minutes). Here’s another example of a custom flashlight and a magnifying glass: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYHej1rTqOw

  2. Avery June 8, 2020

    Tyson this is really cool! Your presentation is really detailed but still quite simple to understand. You present different questions and answer them all in an interesting manner so as to not leave me bored. The part I feel that could be improved upon would be the overall flow, specifically how the slides transition and the pauses between them. But I know sometimes it’s hard to fix that kind of thing. My question for you is how are you planning to use this information in your experiment? Will you be using an average small sized magnifying glass or something bigger?

    • Tyson Z June 9, 2020 — Post Author

      Thanks Avery! For my experiment I plan to find a rear-projection tv and take it apart for the largest fresnel lens, then find other lens sizes through other means (or smaller tvs). Similar to the first video I showed. I’d like to measure the temperature of the focal point (if possible without melting the test) and/or I would like to test materials that will either light fire or melt under the focal point.

  3. Indah June 8, 2020

    Interesting presentation Tyson! Very clear script and images and videos relating to your topic. Easy to follow along and enjoyable to watch. Something I noticed is that the volume on this video is very quiet, is there any way you could have changed this? My question is why did you end up choosing this topic? Why were you interesting in gaining this information?

    • Tyson Z June 8, 2020 — Post Author

      I must’ve had my dac/amp high when recording it, so that could be why the volume was low, sorry about that! I chose this topic after I saw this video on a giant fresnel lens from a tv, which is shown partially in my presentation. I’ve been interested in electromagnetic radiation for some time and after seeing the video, I had the urge to learn more about it.

  4. Nathan June 8, 2020

    Fun and interesting! Really good job! The subject was interesting, and who doesn’t like watching a rock melt? One thing to possibly change would be the interesting tab changes, but besides that, everything was overall pretty good. My only question would be is there a specific lens size, thickness, etc. that works the absolute best at focusing rays?

    • Tyson Z June 8, 2020 — Post Author

      Haha, sorry about the tab changes, I wasn’t able to get the presentation videos working on the PowerPoint. I had to improvise a little bit. For your question, the lens size doesn’t matter for the focus of the rays, the size only increases the number of rays it focuses. The thickness would be dependent on how large the lens is, but unless the lens is perfectly transparent, then a thicker lens would lose more of the rays from reflection. An ideal lens would be a perfectly transparent one with no spherical aberrations.

  5. Evan June 7, 2020

    Interesting Presentation Tyson! I found your presentation super interesting, and it was very detailed. One small wish was that there were gaps of silence between each slide, and when you switched to the videos. Cutting these out maybe would’ve helped the flow of the presentation. Other than that, it was super well done and I learned a lot. One question I have is how can the high temperatures seen in the second video be used industrially or practically?

    • Tyson Z June 8, 2020 — Post Author

      Industrially, I think they could be a way to generate electricity or melt down metals without using coal or other materials used for creating hot fires. Here’s a comment under this video that has a pretty good theory on how it could be used:

      Here’s the back-theory on this.
      We break limestone with this to get CO2 out. We end up with lime, which we can use to re-capture CO2.
      The CO2 we got from heating up limestone gets pushed through a secondary membrane heated enough to break the CO2 into carbon monoxide, for use in Syngas processes.
      – All we need is a hydrogen source. We’re messing around with water processes, and ceramic catalysts. We’re trying to make methanol to replace gasoline, and also for use in plastics. The oil companies can keep their infrastructure and just sell the product.
      -this is meant to be a fuel for pickup trucks, semis, trains, and tractors, permanently, for as long as we live on earth. Some of us basically admit that liquid fuels rule and the internal combustion engine is here to stay.
      Our only variable is albedo mismatch. If you built a big array in the American southwest, it can potentially cool the area dramatically.
      -we have another thing called heat-wire. We can concentrate the heat and send it down fiber optics, that way we don’t kill birds.

      Practically, for a home or work usage it could be used for welding or soldering (this would be very difficult though, so I’m not sure if it could be considered practical). Not of that scale, but fresnel lenses are commonly used as fire starters for survival in the wild or camping.

Leave a Reply to Tyson Z Cancel reply

© 2024 Tyson’s Blog

Theme by Anders Norén