WARNING: the power of refraction

[LewisM]

Sitting in the car waiting for my daughter at school. I have a bottle of water in the centre console cup holders. The bottle is resting against my leather covered handbrake. Its hot and sunny...

I see smoke. Immediately I suspected my car phone charger, being the high quality chinese electronic it is...

Nope. Its the water bottle refracting to a pinpoint on my handbrake leather!!!! Burnt a ruddy hole in it!!!

Glad i was in the car...imagine coming back from getting the kids to a smouldering car!!!!

Beware of physics

[strongmanmike (Michael)]

Wow wouldn't have thought it possible....

I am thinking though that since the Sun moves the refracted point would move or disappear reasonably quickly? But still....sheesh expensive leather?

[Atmos (Colin)]

Also not something that I would have expected! You know, if you'd have ever tried to do it yourself or even replicate it... It'll never work haha

If it is being refracted accurately enough, it only needs a couple of seconds an sadly the sun doesn't move across the sky fast enough the counteract the hole burning issue :-(

[RB (Andrew)]

At least you had water on hand in such an emergency.

[troypiggo (Troy)]

At least water was close at hand if it caught fire

[LewisM]

Actually I DID replicate it. Being a nearly spherical lens , the focal point was about 1cm. It was just pure chance. If the handbrake wasnt up it wouldnt have happened

The lensing was hapoening where the bottle tapers at top. Also the bottle was full.

[rustigsmed (Russell)]

crazy that it did that. I wonder if the windshield somehow contributed.

reminds me of this http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-23930675

my fav bit of architecture, frying the footpath cars / people on sunny days.

[Camelopardalis (Dunk)]

Cheap leather deserves to burn

[ZeroID (Brent)]

Had a similar incident years ago with a curved ( I won't call it parabolic) shaving mirror on the back seat. Head lining had a nice melted burn line across the roof !!

[Wavytone]

About the same time as the jag being melted by that idiotic building in London, some arty-farty decided it would be novel to erect a very large (think 4-5 metres diameter) concave mirror outside the museum of contemporary art at the rocks, it was pretty much vertical.

Only snag being that facing east, as the sun rose each morning it fried the lawn leaving a scorch mark. D'uh...

I sent the MCA director an email warning this thing was downright dangerous if any pedestrian copped a reflection of the sun in the eyes... the darned thing was removed quickly afterwards.