Las Vegas Hotel Vdara an Accidental Death Ray

evanism writes "A hotel in Las Vegas is accidentally designed to be a massive parabolic dish that focuses the suns rays into a death ray! Burns hair, plastic and causes pain." It apparently lasts for several minutes during afternoons of bright sunlight, but if you need to perform science on it, you better hurry since they plan to ruin/fix it.

Images

[cosm]

Interesting story. Dumbass images. Besides the burned newspaper bag and perhaps one obscure image of the parabolic hotel in question, every other image is just scenery or people partying in a pool. The fact that there are so many of them on the ABC website touts the true journalistic intent (or perhaps marketing, scantily clad women abound).

Disney Concert Hall

[Anonymous Coward]

The Disney Concert Hall in LA used to have a similar problem. Part of the building was covered in mirror finish stainless steel panels (most of the surface had rough surfaced panels). At certain times, the curved surface would focus the sun onto a building across the street, raising the temperature in some rooms. The fix was to roughen up the mirror finish.

Same thing in the old Lucent building at Chicago

[Magnus Pym]

The architect thought it would be cool to have a massive dish-like glass structure on the side of the building, shaped like an enormous microwave antenna. Unfortunately, the thing focused the suns rays like a magnifying glass. The insides got really hot, especially near the security desk! Dont' know if anyone got burned, though.

I've heard of this before.

[zero_out]

There was a news story several years ago about a fire that destroyed a family's patio, and damaged their house. The fire department couldn't figure out how it started, but then they discovered the dog's glass water bowl about ten feet from where the fire started. They tested their theory, and sure enough, the owners were filling the glass bowl with water at just the right time, and putting it in just the right place, that it magnified the afternoon sunlight into a spot that set fire to weather-treated wood boards.

Re:Post a warning?

[TheCRAIGGERS]

Since the building is basically parabolic, won't the spot stay mostly stationary? I mean, isn't that the whole point of parabolic focusers?

I say install a solar station at the location and let people charge their gadgets off it.

Re:Post a warning?

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't a tiny pool or hotel, this is Vegas pool party territory, where there are thousands of people at each massive pool. The pools cost over $60m each, just to gain entrance is $50/person. It's basically a big, very loud, drunken party in the midday sun.

Re:Too much money to fix, thing outside the box

[jedidiah]

They should call out the Mythbusters. It looks like Archimede's death ray may have been vindicated.

Re:Runs to Vegas

[The Archon V2.0]

with large jar of mutant ants. Ooh crap. The jar is broken. The mutant ants are free! And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords

I TOLD you that ant farm keyboard idea wouldn't work!

This was the subject of an old sci fi short story

[pjwhite]

I remember reading a story many years ago which was probably published in the late 1950s or 1960s. It was about an architect who murdered a rival by designing and having built a skyscraper with reflective widows controlled by a computer, ostensibly to maintain the interior environment of the building, but in reality as a way to focus the light of the sun on the rival's house, some miles away. The rival and his house were destroyed by a "mysterious" fire.
I wish I could remember the name of the author and the the story title.