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Asked by markbarwell to Andrew, Daniel, Hayley, Natalia, Peta on 23 Nov 2011.
Question: Why do we never see spontaneous combustion
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Daniel Scully answered on 17 Nov 2011:
If something has enough energy to combust it will usually do it as soon as it can, ie: straight away.
Things can sometimes be precariously close to combusting and just need a small ammount of energy to set them off. Like a glass on the edge of a table being precariously close to falling off… but it still takes a nudge to send it over the edge, it can’t fall over on its own.
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Andrew Cairns answered on 17 Nov 2011:
There was a recent case of spontaneous combustion (I’m guessing you mean of humans) in Ireland recently. An elderly gentleman was found burnt in his house, with apparently no explanation. Despite many searches for an answer the coroner was forced to return a verdict of death by spontaneous combustion. It is a very bizarre concept, but something that is the same in most of these cases is that the person is found next to a fire, so this potentially acts as the nudge Daniel is talking about.
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Hayley Smith answered on 18 Nov 2011:
Most forest or wild fires have definite natural or human causes, eg lightening strikes or started by humans. However, in some extreme cases some can be caused by extreme temperature and they spontaneously combust!
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Peta Foster answered on 23 Nov 2011:
Human spontaneous combustion is indeed very strange and i would agree with Andrew on that.
Generally a ignition source is required to start off the combustion we are commonly familiar with. There are substances that will also spontaneously ignite when exposed to oxygen… this is because they react with the oxygen and the reaction puts out energy in the form of heat and light which we see as it burning.
Apparently pistachio nuts are prone to spontaneous combustion is not stored correctly…. just got that from wikipedia… interesting huh? 😀
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