TPO 30 Integrated Writing: A little over 2,200 years ago, the Roman navy attacked the Greek port city of Syracuse.

TOEFL Writing Topic (TPO 30 Integrated Writing): Summarize the points made in the lecture, being sure to explain how they challenge the specific point made in the reading passage.

A little over 2,200 years ago, the Roman navy attacked the Greek port city of Syracuse. According to some ancient historians, the Greeks defended themselves with an ingenious weapon called a “burning mirror”: a polished copper surface curved to focus the Sun’s rays onto Roman ships, causing them to catch fire. However, we have several reasons to suspect that the story of the burning mirror is just a myth and the Greeks of Syracuse never rally built such a device.

First, the ancient Greeks were not technologically advanced enough to make such a device. A mirror that would focus sunlight with sufficient intensity to set ships on fire would have to be several meters wide. Moreover, the mirror would have to have a very precise parabolic curvature(a curvature derived from a geometric shape known as the parabola). The technology for manufacturing a large sheet of copper with such specifications did not exist in the ancient world.

Second, the burning mirror would have taken a long time to set the ships on fire. In an experiment conducted to determine whether a burning mirror was feasible, a device concentrating the Sun’s rays on a wooden object 30 meters away took ten minutes to set the object on fire: and during that time, the object had to be unmoving. It is unlikely that Roman ships stayed perfectly still for that much time, Such a weapon would therefore have been very impractical and ineffective.

Third, a burning mirror does not seem like an improvement on a weapon that the Greeks already had: flaming arrows. Shooting at an enemy’s ships with flaming arrows was a common way of setting the ships on fire. The burning mirror and flaming arrows would have been effective at about the same distance. So the Greeks had no reason to build a weapon like a burning mirror.

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The reading and the lecture are both discussing whether the burning mirror existed in ancient time or not. The author of the reading feels negative about using the burning mirror. However, the lecturer challenges the claims made by the author. She is of the opinion that these explanations are faulty.

First of all, the author argues that the burning mirror was not an advanced tool. The article also mentions that using this tool is quite complicated, such as specific precise parabolic curvature. The specific argument is challenged by the lecturer. She claims that Greek people understood the principle pretty well. Additionally, she says that they could use small pieces of copper to make it.

Secondly, the writer suggests that it takes 10 minutes to cause a fire while using the burning mirror. In the article, it denies that Greek people can stay in the same position for a long time in order to concentrate the Sun’s ray on wooden. The lecturer, however, rebuts this by mentioning that there are other materials can improve efficiency. She elaborates this by bringing up the point that the pitch, a sticker thing, which could enhance the time while focusing the energy.

Finally, the author posits that flaming arrows were more ubiquitous as a weapon at that time. Moreover, the article it is believed that not only burning mirrors but also flaming arrows could achieve the same efficacy. In contrast, the lecturer’s position is that flaming arrows were too common to be recognized. She notes that the burning mirror would surprise the enemy since no one had never seen a mirror which could cause a fire. {271words}

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