All these backflips are very well, but I invoke Ockham’s Razor. The overwhelming odds are that a mirror in a headboard is made of glass in a wooden frame. And most large mirrors I’ve dealt with are backed by plywood. It’s very unlikely to warp concave enough to focus the sun to ignition. Magnifying mirrors, glass doorknobs etc are a completely different story, they are lenses that can focus light. Single flat mirrors can’t.
So… It’s 2016 and you still don’t know how to use Google?
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for “'freak event” put “could have been expected if you used your brain”
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From on the bed it looks like
…except with multiple reflections of you and your partner, instead of of the rest of the Tacky Bed Showroom.
ETA: …
The random slobs standing around the room really accentuate the romantic aura, don’t they.
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Come on, don’t be pointlessly nitpicky. A magnifying glass and a parabolic reflector both focus light, which is clearly what he was talking about. Just 'cause the guy didn’t have “parabolic reflector” on the tip of his tongue doesn’t mean he’s an idiiot.
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And curved mirrors can and do, in fact, magnify, hence why they are used in magnifying mirrors of shaving and make up, and in the largest optical telescopes in the world.
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Things like this seem to have been happening since mythbusters closed down. I wonder if they could do an annual wrap up and analysis of strange accidents.
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Just have it made by the people who made the mirror for the Hubble space telescope. No way it will focus then.
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The HST’s mirror was originally defective and required a Shuttle mission to correct it.
http://www.scienceclarified.com/scitech/Telescopes/Hubble.html
When the HST was launched, an optimistic NASA spokesperson called the telescope a new window on the universe. Entering orbit, all systems functioned properly when astronomers sent the remote signal to open the door that covered the telescope optics to take the first picture. The so-called first light occurred on May 20, 1990.
The photographs transmitted back to Earth successfully, yet experienced astronomers found the images disturbing. They were the wrong shape. Engineers attempted to adjust the lens, but after several weeks they recognized that something was seriously wrong. As more blurred photos poured in, astronomer Eric Chaisson inspected the faulty images and later recalled, “I sensed a total deflation in my gut.” 24
Hubble’s main mirror was the wrong shape and could not focus properly. Engineers inspected an identical backup mirror and discovered than the central region of the mirror was too flat by just a few nanometers. This mistake severely reduced the resolution of the telescope so that when focused, it was able to gather only about 15 percent of the light of a very distant star instead of the 80 percent needed to produce a clear image.
The mistake was devastating to the $1.5 billion project. The mirror itself could not be repaired or exchanged deep in space, so NASA engineers went to work to develop corrective optics for Hubble’s mirror.
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All because management pushed and pushed and carped about cost and time. And at the end, because of the same, they skimped on tests and did not do a final let’s-try-if-it-all-works-properly-before-we-send-it-up-there step.
Idiots. Pointy hairdos galore.
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Who the hell buys a mirrored headboard?!
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Hey, it went well with the one on the ceiling!
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Paint fumes or dried plants could ignite. Or perhaps an object in the light’s path was a lens. I have even heard of 2 liter PET bottles (used to scare away cats) causing fires, though they were full of water.
That’s a good idea. Distracts from those “the ceiling needs to get repainted” comments.
So glad someone else out there survived their “accidental death ray” story! Here’s mine:
I was so proud of my fisheye lens window, but when I came back home one day I found a strange scorch mark on the curtain. Clearly the setting sun had etched its image into the curtain before going down.
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