A couple of months ago, Emile brought home a HUGE projection TV that had been abandoned by the side of the road. Consider this my public apology for wondering What The Heck he was thinking. He pulled the Fresnel lens out of it and we finally got around to testing it out.
This is an innocent pile of five pennies:
After a nervous dash out to the driveway trying not to start forest fires with the huge lens held between us, not to mention some fidgeting and momentary blindness caused by trying to get the pennies in the focal spot, this was the result:
I think the scorched earth is a particularly nice touch. Once they cooled, we took the pennies inside and lined them up to better view the damage:
It's hard to tell from the images, but the copper jacket on the top few pennies stayed intact (in a scorched sort of usage for intact), but whatever metals they're filling pennies with these days either liquefied or sublimated. Larkin and Finn have a new respect for solar energy. I kinda want to make a Fresnel solar microwave.
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