Ancient Greek Burning Mirror Summary

The article states that the Greeks probably did not use a burning mirror which is often believed to have been used to defend themselves from attacks by the Roman navy about 2,200 years ago and provides three reasons of support. The professor, however, explains that the reasons are not compelling and refutes each of the author's reasons.

First, the reading says that the ancient Greeks did not have technologies sophisticated enough to make a burning mirror, which is supposedly a large sheet of copper having a very precise parabolic curvature. Nonetheless, the professor claims that a large number of small mirrors can be put together to make one big sheet of mirror having a perfect parabolic curvature. Therefore, there was no need to have a technology to make it from one large mirror.
Second, the article posits that the time the burning mirror took to set the ships on fire must have been very long based upon one experiment conducted and thus it should not have been a practical and effective weapon.
The professor opposes this point by explaining that the experiment was not perfect enough to accurately measure the effect of it because it assumed that the mirror was used to set wooden ships on fire. In fact, according to the professor, there was a stickly material called "pitch", which was utilized to seal woods used in manufacturing the ships. This material gets more easily set on fire. In addition, the professor explains that the fire is expected to quickly spread to the wooden parts of the ships and thus the mirror should have been effective. Third, the reading states that there was no reason to use a burning mirror as they had flaming arrows which can be also used to set ships on fire. However, the professor states that the flaming arrows are visible and so the Roman navy can easily avoid them, whereas mirrors are not visible and thus it can be more effective than the
arrows.