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An Ikea Bowl Has Been Setting Things on Fire

atlasobscura.com

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Re: An Ikea Bowl Has Been Setting Things on Fire

#62

Curious how clickbaiting works now. Taking the articles title "This Ikea Bowl has been setting things on fire", the "This" is an interesting word choice that is a great reminder of the "You won't believe THIS simple trick to..." that started the whole craze. I'd be curious to see some A/B testing on semi-baiting titles vs something more descriptive like the original source 'Ikea investigates after 'bowl sets Swede's…

Clickbait purveyors are certainly conducting large-scale A/B testing on their content as it's presented and shared. You even see it on twitter where journos will post ten stings for the same article and wait for one to win out. It's bizarre.

Re: An Ikea Bowl Has Been Setting Things on Fire

#63

Curious how clickbaiting works now. Taking the articles title "This Ikea Bowl has been setting things on fire", the "This" is an interesting word choice that is a great reminder of the "You won't believe THIS simple trick to..." that started the whole craze. I'd be curious to see some A/B testing on semi-baiting titles vs something more descriptive like the original source 'Ikea investigates after 'bowl sets Swede's…

I thought the title meant Ikea was disrupting the bowl industry.

you win man!

Re: An Ikea Bowl Has Been Setting Things on Fire

#64
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This building in London can melt cars or set fires in other buildings: http://www.nbcnews.com/science/how-london-skyscraper-can-mel...

Well, melt the paint on cars. I suspect that the amount of energy required to melt an entire car would be quite a lot more than even a skyscraper worth of surface area could gather from the sun. > This isn't the first time Viñoly's architecture has raised eyebrows as well as temperatures: His Vdara Hotel in Las Vegas has been criticized for directing sunbeams onto the swimming pool deck that are hot enough to melt pl…

> I suspect that the amount of energy required to melt an entire car would be quite a lot more than even a skyscraper worth of surface area could gather from the sun.

Actually, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_furnace ... The furnace in Odeillo, France can reach up to 3500 °C, and it's cross section is just about 50x50 meters. Of course, your typical skyscraper won't create those temperatures accidentially, but if you have the surface area of a skyscraper side in mirrors and can arrange them like you want... it gets pretty pretty hot.

That's the temperature, about the energy: Steel melts at 1370 °C, specific heat of carbon steel is 490 J/kg K. I can't find the actually melting energy. But this means, roughly, that you need 168.5 kWh to raise a ton of steel to melting temperature. The Wikipedia article says the Odeillo device creates 3200 kW (although that paragraph seems to be cut off)., so in principle it should be possible to melt a car. Scary thing.

Re: An Ikea Bowl Has Been Setting Things on Fire

#65

Curious how clickbaiting works now. Taking the articles title "This Ikea Bowl has been setting things on fire", the "This" is an interesting word choice that is a great reminder of the "You won't believe THIS simple trick to..." that started the whole craze. I'd be curious to see some A/B testing on semi-baiting titles vs something more descriptive like the original source 'Ikea investigates after 'bowl sets Swede's…

Where is the line between clickbait and attention grabbing headline. In the case of "You won't believe THIS simple trick to..." I'd definitely call it clickbait - but in this instance, the title reflects exactly what the article is about, and while the modified title on HN does a far better representation of the contents, I personally don't see the harm in how Atlas Obscura worded the title.

Or maybe I am just really susceptible to clickbait titles...

Re: An Ikea Bowl Has Been Setting Things on Fire

#66

"Archimedes heat bowl" would be a better name, Wikipedia: "The device, sometimes called the "Archimedes heat ray", was used to focus sunlight onto approaching ships, causing them to catch fire. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes

I believe that mythbusters had an episode disproving the Archimedes heat ray

They tried and failed three times (episodes 16, 46, and 157).

Here's an interesting write-up about the team of MIT students that worked with them on the second try: http://web.mit.edu/2.009/www/experiments/deathray/10_Mythbus...

Re: An Ikea Bowl Has Been Setting Things on Fire

#68
post #67

This is great if you need fire and you don't have matches...

I think it would actually be quite difficult to start a fire with this. Speaking as a former boy scout who had to build a fire with a magnifying glass for wilderness survival merit badge - it's really easy get smoke, it's quite difficult to get a flame.

The article claims that he "set a piece of newspaper on fire" using the bowl, but after watching the video I just saw some smoldering paper - no flames. I'm betting the grape stem just smoldered a bit as well.

You have to have very good airflow with dry, fine tinder in order to start a fire with a magnifying glass or parabolic mirror... unless of course you build a lens or mirror of monstrous proportions.

Re: An Ikea Bowl Has Been Setting Things on Fire

#70
Can't help myself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJuuFLo1a84&t=252s

Getting fire with the spoon (!) in Siberia's (!!) Winter (!!!).

The sun light is not very bright at that time, just for a note. Sun is about couple tens of degrees above horizon and (infrared) light mostly caught by the atmosphere.

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