The Origami Forum

I know ~origami~ already knows about this, but today a friend's phone spontaneously combusted in his pocket.
Ok, not exactly spontaneous (the battery overheated), but I was wondering if anything near you has burst into flames randomly?

indeed... my dreams bursted into flames a couple of years ago... does that count?

haha, not sure... physical existing things like people maybe?
what dreams may I ask?

Hmm... my friends don't often spontaneously combust, they usually just light themselves on fire (although usually just their hands).
Yes, my friends are pyros, and I don't fold near them because of that.

Oh, I know people who do that, they light their jeans with a cigarette lighter and then see who can pat it out first. Not exactly spontaneous...

some of my friends and i got drunk and decided it would be fun to strip and spary each other with Deodorant (very flamable) and then set each other on fire lol, but were not to stupid and we were on the beach

Oh man, better not let any of my friends ever hear this, the might start getting ideas

lol

Deodorant? Flammable? I need matches...

When the physicist Richard Feynman was young, he used to dip his hand in water and then in benzene, then set fire to it. The benzene would float on top of the water as it burned so his hand didn't get burnt.
He learnt the hard way that only children or people with hairless hands can do this, or the hairs act as wicks and, well, ouch.

Ouch... my friends do all sorts of cruel things to my models like set them on fire...

Make spirals. That way, when your friends light your models, the fire will spiral down.

I don't know which of you will find this interresting, but here's a very good theory for the cause of true spontanious combustion (and even perhaps the JFK 'magic bullet' mystery)

The neutrino is an elementary particle. It has 0 magnetic charge and is very VERY light. In any given second there are a couple thousand of these little guys going straight through your body. They are called WIP's (Similer to WIMP's, just less mass) which is an acronym for Weakly Interacting (Massive) Particle. It is because it is so weakly interacting that you don't notice it going through you. The chances of one actually interacting with one of the particles in your body are astronomically small.

Here's the thing, if a 1.7 MeV (eV is how much energy it has, MeV is a million eV, which quite alot) were to interact with a particle in your body, it would leave a hole the size of a football inside you. If that hole was by some chance on the outside of your body, then your clothing would probably catch fire. Viola, spontanious combustion.

Now the chances of this happening to you are so small, that you have a better chance of getting killed by a lightning strike on a clear day, so don't worry .

Just a afterthought. Could JFK have been hit by a few of these at the same time as a bullet going through him?

enjoy

My friend who is very smart and knowledgable ... yeah, anyway, said that the reason some people spontaneously combust is because they are elderly and sit near a fire. Seeing as they have little moisture in their ody, they combust into a pile of ashes leaving their feet which cotains something or other that prevents burning. I think it has something to do with varicose veins ... I don't really remember...

Well, actually, the most commonly accepted view of what spontanious combustion really is, is the whick effect. The basic idea is simple. To picture it imagine a candle with a mesh on the outside of whick-like gauss or something similar instead of the whick in the middel.

Normally the whick is the persons clothing, probably drench in sweat or deodourent or something which helps it catch fire, and stay burning for quite a long time. People probably get a fright when they see their cloths on fire and perhaps hit their head and pass out.

That's the more official view of it. But I doubt it would work for origami model. It's hard to exclude a malicious brat as suspect.