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No, it's a very measured and pragmatic response. It even struck me as something an engineer would write. Explaining the conditions leading to a problem is not e

No, it's a very measured and pragmatic response. It even struck me as something an engineer would write. Explaining the conditions leading to a problem is not evading responsibility. The test, of course, will be whether they will be using the coming 12 months to figure out a solution and applying it so this won't happen again next time there's sun in September. I think they will, since torching things is generally not a good idea, and also liability hell. > How about they design a building right. Oh please. If you've never build anything that turned out to malfunction in an unexpected way, you've never build anything. It's not about taking the position of the sun into account, it's foreseeing that the curvature of the facade would concentrate the sun in an unfortunate way.

wil421 13y ago
>It's not about taking the position of the sun into account, it's foreseeing that the curvature of the facade would concentrate the sun in an unfortunate way. Any kid with a magnifying class can tell you what curved class can do with light. My point was that if building projects take in account which way the sun will move in the sky, then they should take into account what the sun might do when it hits the building. > Oh please. If you've never build anything that turned out to malfunction in an unexpected way, you've never build anything. You are very right and I dont see how they might have foreseen this. It is quite unusual for the windows on a building to start melting cars, especially in a mild climate like London. The fact remains that if it can mess a Jaguar up what happens when the sun rays are concentrated into a flat across the street that may have a small child or elderly person who may not be to leave the room when it starts getting hot.
- VladRussian2 13y ago
  >You are very right and I dont see how they might have foreseen this. as it was already mentioned this architect had already built death ray building in Las Vegas >It is quite unusual for the windows on a building to start melting cars, especially in a mild climate like London. Sun's potential energy flux on the Earth's surface, be it Las Vegas or London, is 1KWt per m2 of the surface _perpendicular_ to the flux. So given clear day and good angle (close to perpendicular) of a building to the Sun's light, the building will be beaming back significant part of that 1KWt/m2.
  - sergiosgc 13y ago
    SI pedantic, I know, but: What in the name of Tesla is a KWt? Perchance you meant KW?
    - yazmeya 13y ago
      Even more pedantically, he almost certainly meant "kW". (On the assumption that the speaker's native tongue is, say, Russian, his usage of "Wt" is actually not surprising.)
    - beedogs 13y ago
      yazmeya: your account appears as [dead] (aka hellbanned).
  - wil421 13y ago
    If the car is hotter to begin with because of the air temperature around it then the melting point on a component of the car will be reached faster. So if it was in a much hotter place like Las Vegas where the sun shines a majority of the time I could see things like this happening more often. Instead of mild I should've said rainy or cloudy place like London.
  - teamonkey 13y ago
    A minor point, it's at its peak of 1kWm-2 when the sunlight is perpendicular to the Earth, that is, when the sun is directly overhead, because that's when it has to pass through the least atmosphere. Sunlight reflecting off the building where the sun is not directly overhead will necessarily be less intense.
    - waffles4all 13y ago
      A minor point, the direct peak intensity is not 1 kWm^-2 at AM 1. AM1.5G is the standard spectrum and it is acquired at an oblique angle of 48.2 degrees from zenith. It is typically normalized to 1 kWm^-2 due to the inherent variability encountered when actually trying to measure these things.
Swizec 13y ago
Except anyone who's gone through high school can tell you that s exactly what a parabola does - it concentrates the sun in a specific point. Had they used a hyperbolic shape or essentially any other curve, this problem wouldn't happen and the building would still look the same to the casual observer.
- gus_massa 13y ago
  You don't need a exact parabola. You can get almost the same effect with a spherical mirror. Almost all the rays converge to the focus point, but there is some aberration. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_aberration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_aberration The same effect is possible to obtain with a hyperbola. A "small" section of a hyperbola is very similar to a small section of a circle that is very similar to a small section of a parabola. With any similar curve you get a "focus" point. Some are better to concentrate the rays in a small area and produce more heating there. They should have calculated where this point is and be sure that wherever the sun is, the point is allways bellow the earth surface, so they get a big lighted area in the floor. (Another possibility is to put the "focus" in the middle of the air and hope that no one notice the roasted birds.)
rhizome 13y ago
No, it's a very measured and pragmatic response. It even struck me as something an engineer would write. You know the old joke about the engineer and the hot-air balloon? http://www.poeticexpressions.co.uk/poems/Engineer%20v%20Manager.htm http://www.poeticexpressions.co.uk/poems/Engineer%20v%20Mana...

wil421 13y ago

>It's not about taking the position of the sun into account, it's foreseeing that the curvature of the facade would concentrate the sun in an unfortunate way. Any kid with a magnifying class can tell you what curved class can do with light. My point was that if building projects take in account which way the sun will move in the sky, then they should take into account what the sun might do when it hits the building. > Oh please. If you've never build anything that turned out to malfunction in an unexpected way, you've never build anything. You are very right and I dont see how they might have foreseen this. It is quite unusual for the windows on a building to start melting cars, especially in a mild climate like London. The fact remains that if it can mess a Jaguar up what happens when the sun rays are concentrated into a flat across the street that may have a small child or elderly person who may not be to leave the room when it starts getting hot.

VladRussian2 13y ago
>You are very right and I dont see how they might have foreseen this. as it was already mentioned this architect had already built death ray building in Las Vegas >It is quite unusual for the windows on a building to start melting cars, especially in a mild climate like London. Sun's potential energy flux on the Earth's surface, be it Las Vegas or London, is 1KWt per m2 of the surface _perpendicular_ to the flux. So given clear day and good angle (close to perpendicular) of a building to the Sun's light, the building will be beaming back significant part of that 1KWt/m2.
- sergiosgc 13y ago
  SI pedantic, I know, but: What in the name of Tesla is a KWt? Perchance you meant KW?
  - yazmeya 13y ago
    Even more pedantically, he almost certainly meant "kW". (On the assumption that the speaker's native tongue is, say, Russian, his usage of "Wt" is actually not surprising.)
  - beedogs 13y ago
    yazmeya: your account appears as [dead] (aka hellbanned).
- wil421 13y ago
  If the car is hotter to begin with because of the air temperature around it then the melting point on a component of the car will be reached faster. So if it was in a much hotter place like Las Vegas where the sun shines a majority of the time I could see things like this happening more often. Instead of mild I should've said rainy or cloudy place like London.
- teamonkey 13y ago
  A minor point, it's at its peak of 1kWm-2 when the sunlight is perpendicular to the Earth, that is, when the sun is directly overhead, because that's when it has to pass through the least atmosphere. Sunlight reflecting off the building where the sun is not directly overhead will necessarily be less intense.
  - waffles4all 13y ago
    A minor point, the direct peak intensity is not 1 kWm^-2 at AM 1. AM1.5G is the standard spectrum and it is acquired at an oblique angle of 48.2 degrees from zenith. It is typically normalized to 1 kWm^-2 due to the inherent variability encountered when actually trying to measure these things.

Swizec 13y ago

Except anyone who's gone through high school can tell you that s exactly what a parabola does - it concentrates the sun in a specific point. Had they used a hyperbolic shape or essentially any other curve, this problem wouldn't happen and the building would still look the same to the casual observer.

gus_massa 13y ago
You don't need a exact parabola. You can get almost the same effect with a spherical mirror. Almost all the rays converge to the focus point, but there is some aberration. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_aberration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_aberration The same effect is possible to obtain with a hyperbola. A "small" section of a hyperbola is very similar to a small section of a circle that is very similar to a small section of a parabola. With any similar curve you get a "focus" point. Some are better to concentrate the rays in a small area and produce more heating there. They should have calculated where this point is and be sure that wherever the sun is, the point is allways bellow the earth surface, so they get a big lighted area in the floor. (Another possibility is to put the "focus" in the middle of the air and hope that no one notice the roasted birds.)

rhizome 13y ago

No, it's a very measured and pragmatic response. It even struck me as something an engineer would write. You know the old joke about the engineer and the hot-air balloon? http://www.poeticexpressions.co.uk/poems/Engineer%20v%20Manager.htm http://www.poeticexpressions.co.uk/poems/Engineer%20v%20Mana...