Fire starting coffee hack with a cup Vacuum formed parabolic shape greenpowerscience

Hi dan, got an idea for you. Maybe you could put resin (the stuff you get for paperweights) into the plastic wrap and let it set. The peel away the plastic wrap and see if the resin is good enough as a lense.... worth a try. Regards k from uk

MUDDy, You are my favorite wind turbine blade maker! And ceiling fan to alternator converter and dual axial flux demonstrator. Keep up the great work on your channel.

an aluminum tin coke can also works well as a parabolic lense to start a filre. On another note, I wonder if you make a parabolic dish with pure silver if you could generate more heat and power since silver is the most reflective metal?

Reflective paint

Does not work, there are no paints that create a mirrored surface. Even the $129 3 can 3 step process make a pewter surface at best.

Very nice. Keep exploring!

Lighter colors reflect more light so more would leave the cup but the reflecting light would be a combination of cup inner surface and water surface. The dark coffee also reflects as the water surface is smooth.

Is your caps lock and shift button broken?

Why use coffee with the mylar? Why not just boiling water? Why not just use plastic wrap for the vacuum and tape the mylar to the center? That way the mylar only has to do the reflecting and doesn't have to hold a vacuum.

It's great because mylar is a common material out in the middle of no-where. Potato-chip wrappers are made of mylar, as trash they blow around in the wind and end up in all sorts of places.

how about two layers of plastic foil and between Epoxy resin let it dry in this parabolic shape and than make a thin layer of silver with AgNo3+glycerin the silver can U cycle it from old/broken mirrors

This works better and is really cheap. watch?v=5rYr1Yrqwrk

damm nigga, might as well get a match!

watch?v=5rYr1Yrqwrk that´s it why I love your channel^^ to Subscribe you, was the best chose i´ve ever done! you´r a Genius^^

Thank you:-)

U are very smart

Been awhile since I had a good coffee.

Dan, instead of coffee, if you had a reflective solution heated & with static charge (?) you could coat your plastic from the inside of the cup, then you'd have a portable parabolic (too far out an idea ?)

isn't it a torispherical shape? It is surely not parabolic! It will function like a parabola but there will be negligible spherical aberration!

It is closer to a cross between catenary and parabola. Vacuum telescope mirrors have been used for optical imaging. Here is a video on reducing distortion: watch?v=bBXKbfqI49E Because all materials are more flexible at the center, the rigidity of the edges for the parabolic shape. Since we are using it for solar concentration, optical aberrations are not a big concern.

I love you guys! You never cease to stretch the imagination, and entertain:)

I wonder if adding creamer to the coffee would make it more reflective. Thanks for the video Dan.

Dude I made some modifications to your design on the $25 square mirror you made and made a pretty rad hot dog cooker. Gonna take it to the beach and be the most eco-friendly beach bum ever B-) If I ever get around to making a video for it i'll send it to you.

No, the coffee alone would heat from the sun since it is dark. The cellophane would only act as an insulator. Lenses concentrate light vs magnify it or amplify so the diameter of the cup determines the area of sunlight that is absorbed. Water lenses also only work in the summer when the sun is overhead: watch?v=f_zKk03CJKU

Nicely done.

Mylar came from the grow room, right? ;)

it's cute he keeps using coffee. He'd just need regular hot water. OR he doesn't even need a liquid at all. There's the ancient oriental art of cupping where a burning splint in inserted into a glass cup facing down. The split heats the cup and air - the cup is then placed on a surface (in this case the body) as the cup and air cools the vaccum applies suction to various parts of the body. Probably less messy than dealing with making coffee. Could just get a sheet of mylar and some putty - form a ring of putty that's the same circumference as your cup - heat up the cup and the air inside then place quickly over the sealing putty. As it cools it will suck up the mylar. presuming the putty hold, you could just cut off the excess mylar with an exacto knife or something.

just experimented at home. If you carefully unwrap a set of poptarts, you're left with a the reflective wrapper in tact. If you stretch this over a cup (I used an old glass coca-cola cup) and rubber band it down tightly (could use something else for a better seal I guess), you can place it in a pan of cool water and soil bring up to medium heat. If you put a pin hole in the surface of the stretched wrapper, as the cup heats up the air expands in the empty cup and escapes through the hole. after a while (long enough for the water to simmer for a bit), if you seal the hole and remove from the pan of water, the cup and air cool rapidly and the vacuum works on the wrapper almost instantly pulling tightly concave into the cup. Haven't tried to light anything with it yet, but I would imagine with some good sun it would work on something small. 

What if u don't get no sun 😔😂

Y The title says start a fire.The video says it can't. That leaves "Hack"

Richard Dean Anderson is jealous now after seeing this video.

Nowone wanna see a leaf burnin. We wants ta see ya solar driven laser weapon, Ya dig?

Cool!

What if you used sheet aluminum foil

Most of us already have a supply of mylar in our kitchens.  We have potato chip bags which are highly reflective on the inside.

hm.. I guess it's possible to create lenses this way?

hack ?? HACK ????

Well then Sir, that was classy no? I learned something today. Thanks much.
pierre from New Mexico

What if you used water in a metal cup?

good results

you sound like you need more coffee ;-)

Nice to see some serious smarts that can be used in real life.

you could add some water on top of the transparent film and reheat the coffee

What if you use foil and a vaccuum then varnish it set it. A clear varnish.

really creative cool, thanks for sharing!!!

In Argentina that Man is callie pelotudo

Pičovina

Not parabolic. It's spherical.

Good video.

You do not need to use coffee for this. Simple hot water will do the same thing. Or heat the cup up in the oven a little bit and then apply the mylar.

If you have a black container, you can actually heat that up with the Sun, to provide the vacuum when you cool it off.

hm, so if I put a cup in a self-defrosting freezer it'll soon be filled with dehydrated air! then I can put the mylar on it with a small gap on the rim, heat the cup outside the freezer and seal it with elastic. When it cools I should have a strong parabola with an inert atmosphere in contact with the single-surface side.