Question about optics, architecture, and Las Vegas.

[Ladewig]

Steve Wynn is building a new casino in Las Vegas. Photo (http://community.webshots.com/photo/86160121/86160986BCFaxW)
The completed building will be covered with a gold-tinted reflective foil. Won't the shape of the building cause trouble for pedestrians and Strip traffic when the afternoon sun hits it?
The monorail line near the top of the photo runs due east.

[wollery]

Originally posted by Ladewig
Steve Wynn is building a new casino in Las Vegas. Photo (http://community.webshots.com/photo/86160121/86160986BCFaxW)
The completed building will be covered with a gold-tinted reflective foil. Won't the shape of the building cause trouble for pedestrians and Strip traffic when the afternoon sun hits it?
The monorail line near the top of the photo runs due east. Certainly looks like it will, although it will be late afternoon/evening that trouble really starts, when the Sun gets low enough that its' reflection will be right in the eyeline. As for the shape, it's a flat curve, so the "focal point" will actually be a vertical line, which isn't as bad as you might think, and would only really be a problem if you were at exactly the right distance for more than a few seconds. It also depends on how smooth the surfacing is. If it's a smooth curve then the focal plane will have a lot of energy directed at it. If, on the other hand, it's a sequence of flat surfaces then the focal plane will just consist of multiple reflections of the Sun, which won't contain too much energy.

Hopefully the architect has thought of these things and the focal plane is somewhere that people and cars are unlikely to be.

[Dymanic]

This reminds me of something I read about years ago concerning the use of reflective surfaces to control energy costs in large buildings. This was in Phoenix. The details are fuzzy, but it was along the lines of that some particular building had like a sixty percent reduction in cooling costs by having almost its entire exterior covered in reflective glass. Cooling costs for the surrounding buildings went up like twenty percent. If you could adjust the focal point of a building like that, you could direct the rays toward the buildings of competitors. Just a thought.

[Johnny Pneumatic]

Solar Furnace http://w3.byuh.edu/library/curriculum/Science/sciman60.gif