TPO30

The reading claims that the Greeks defended themselves with an ingenious weapon called a burning mirror, but there are several reasons to suspect that the story of the burning mirror is just a myth and the Greeks never rally built such device. It provides three reasons of support. In contrast, the professor states that the reasons in the reading are unconvincing and she refutes each of the author's reasons.

First, the article avers that the ancient Greeks were not technologically advanced enough to make such a device. On the other hand, the speaker opposes this point by saying that an experiment showed that Greeks arranged mirror by small pieces of mirrors so they didn't need to to set the mirror with a large sheet of copper. This appears a contradiction to the information made in the passage.

Second, the passage posits that the burning mirror would have taken a long time to set the ships on fire. However, the professor counters this point by stating that the experiment explained in the reading used to set the fire on wood ships and it took ten minutes, but she states that not all materials in the ships were wood. In fact, she mentions that sticky substances called pitches were added to ships because they are water proof and these materials catch fire very quickly. So, burning mirror set a fire in seconds while the ship was moving. This approves that burnig mirror is an effective weapon. This challenges the second point made in the article.

Third, the article asserts that the burning mirror does not seem like an improvement on a weapon that the Greeks already had:flaming arrows. Conversely, the professor casts doubt on this point by explaining that Roman soldiers were familiar with flaming arrows, but with burning mirror, they couldn't see the fire. Actually, burning mirror would be much surprising and much effective than flaming arrows. This disputes the information in the passage.