You will need:
- Newspaper
- Large tray (made of a non-flammable material)
- Large magnifying glass with high power
Start a fire using nothing but the
sun, magnified as much as possible.
INSTRUCTIONS
- Place a large tray on cemented ground outdoors where there is plenty of sunlight.
- Next, take loads of newspapers and crumple them. Make sure they are not coloured or glossy, as the plain black-and-white kind burns the fastest.
- Place the crumpled newspaper inside the tray, preferably with an area which has a lot of black ink on it, facing upwards.
- Now ask an adult to help you by holding a magnifying glass above the newspapers.
- Ask him to adjust the distance between the lens and the newspaper until a small spot of light appears on the paper.
- Keep the spot constant until a hole forms in the paper. When that happens, make sure that the spot of light continues to stay within the hole.
RESULT
The magnifying glass uses the lens to reflect light from one side to the other side at a specific point. Images are reflected through the glass in a concentrated form. By reflecting the image of the sun onto the papers, we are focusing all the light and brightness of the sun onto a small spot on the newspaper which resultantly makes that spot very, very hot!! And this heat and light is absorbed entirely by the black parts of the paper, since black is the only colour which absorbs all colours well, making it heat up quickly.
