It’s a Saturnalia miracle!!!
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Which ones of them would be suitable for self-ignition when mixed with a fuel? They typically aren’t strong oxidizers, are they?
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the one he was handwaving at, you know, the one you could imagine must exist.
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There are some pretty weird things in chemistry. So I am not opposed to being surprised here and there. But I need an actual molecule here, or at least the CAS number. From the handwaved distance I couldn’t read the small digits.
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Potassium permanganate? Can be used as an antifungal and to age wood. Glycerine is used in polish.
OK, it’s reaching a bit, but chemistry’s not my strong subject.
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No you idiots, it just the reflection from the street in the glass. Oh Sorry if somebody else mentioned this already and I’m wicked late to the party
I think davidrfrench doesn’t understand laser pointers.
http://www.laserpointerpro.com/6000mw-450nm-singlepoint-blue-laser-beam-antislip-laser-pointer-pen-silver-p-2100.html
Actually I’m a physicist, which means I know enough about laser pointers to know they don’t make square holes.
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The point being that there are laser pointers available that can ignite material. Whether they can ignite flame retardant cloth through glass, I’m not sure. I wouldn’t care to own one because, like Ralphie’s BB gun, they’ll “put your eye out”.
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I’m an actual chemist. I can’t even imagine a molecule that does what he said molecules can do.
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That seems the most likely in terms of what is commercially available. Also maybe some jacked up H2O2 solution was misused.
But really, the temporarily concentrated sunlight idea makes more sense to me.
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Good try in theory. In practice, this is not exactly a hair-trigger reaction. Needs fairly high amounts of the chemicals and some volume from which heat dissipation is not too fast. It starts slow and produces heat, gets warmer and faster, until it is warm and fast enough to burn. A typical case of chemical thermal runaway, a representant of the class of reactions that (unless you WANT them to go runaway) have to be kept cool if you do not want them to walk away with your lab or plant.
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Does to me too, I’m just playing chemical “what-if”. Playing it badly, but it’s still fun.
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Chemical Jeopardy is usually just a bad idea 
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But it can be FUN! 
…two words: carbon diselenide…
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Well clearly it was a squareness gun.
Chill out dude…everything is not about you!!!
I too had nothing to do with this fire.
The shop owner likely set the fire in order to sue McDonald’s.
We almost had our woodshop burn down from a pile of oil-soaked rags.
Over night they began smoldering. When we came in they were coal-hot and about to ignite.
Its called spontaneous combustion, in our case it was simple varnish and oil and cotton rags.
In this case it could have been a cardboard box heavily soaked in varnish or finishing oil.
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Unsaturated oils do that. They tend to oxidize, and release heat. The warmer it is, the faster the oxidation goes (up to the limit of the air supply). Won’t be a problem if the heat can dissipate - which is not the case of the well-insulated center of a heap of material.
Same problem can be encountered with e.g. a pile of clothes contaminated with vegetable-derived massaging oil. Or cooking oil. Even after laundering, enough traces can remain to facilitate self-ignition. Better description, focused on self-ignition in laundries, here:
http://www.mcclureindustries.com/Reports/Spontaneous_Ignition.pdf
There is a table there with different oils. Fish and linseed oil are the high danger ones (linseed oil is also the base of varnishes, which are even worse risk by including a (typically cobalt or iron based) catalyst). Corn, cottonseed, olive, pine, soybean and tung oil are moderate risk, palm and peanut oil are low, and castor, coconut, and oleo oil and lard are slight risk. More complete table is in the NFPA Handbook.
Added sources of heat can aggravate the situation; sun, hot air in the dryer (especially when the warm dry laundry is left there after the cycle end)…
Even janitor closets can be sources of fires, when a mop gets contaminated with a suitable material.
Silicone or mineral oils, not containing unsaturated bonds, don’t possess this risk.
Isn’t fire fun?
My girlfriend’s brother’s bike just caught fire the other day, and nearly burned the house down. I wonder if oil soaked into the tarp he covers it with could have been the culprit?
