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Crystal Balls Starting Fires

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Mighty_Emperor

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From the front page:

Crystal Ball Starts Fire at Okla. Home

Thu Jan 29, 6:24 PM ET


SHAWNEE, Okla. - Firefighters in this central Oklahoma town peered into a crystal ball and found the cause for a fire.


It didn't take long for Shawnee Fire Prevention Officer Jimmy Gibson to figure out what caught a homeowner's sofa on fire and brought fire crews to the rescue.

Once the couch was extinguished, Gibson reached into a hole burnt into the sofa and found a glass gazing ball. Soon, sunlight shining through the ball burned two holes in the leg of his pants.

Firefighters then placed the ball in the grass, and within 30 seconds the ground was smoking.

"It has dynamic heat. We were caught off guard," Gibson said. "I couldn't believe how quickly it burned."

Firefighters believe the ball was taken off a table, where it was usually displayed, and placed on the couch by the homeowner's grandchildren. The fire started two days later, when sunshine came through a large set of windows and through the glass ball, igniting the couch.

"It's not something you run across every day," Gibson said. "I'd never seen it."

The fire set off a smoke detector, and the homeowner quickly called the fire department. No one was injured in the fire, which was confined to the sofa.

Gibson said he plans to keep the ball, which the homeowner gave him after the fire a couple weeks ago, on his bookshelf as a conversation piece.

He said the ball worked like a magnifying glass in sunlight, directing light into a heat beam.

Even if the ball was placed on a flat, nonflammable surface, the heat from sunlight could ignite a blaze on a rug or other items, Gibson said, so homeowners should be careful where they place such items.
Click to expand...

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...&u=/ap/20040129/ap_on_fe_st/crystal_ball_fire
 
This is less rare than you'd imagine, my ex-flatmate works in a 'headshop' and has told me before about how she has to watch where she puts the crystal balls in the glass cabinet because a very similar thing almost happened once, she got away with a bit of scorching on that occassion.
 
BlackRiverFalls said:
This is less rare than you'd imagine
Click to expand...

Yes, my other half made some crystal balls when she studied glass blowing a few years ago- we've got scorch marks on various things they've been placed on.

There's a nice long burn mark on one of our windowsills, where the sun moved across it for several hours...
 
The same effect's been used in devices to measure strength of sunlight, quite effectively.
Glass (Crystal?) ball is placed in a holder with a strip of thermal paper behind it, at the focal point. As the sun moves across the sky, the focus moves accordingly, and a hole is burnt in the paper if the sky is nice and clear or a mark is left by the heating of the paper if there's a hazy sky. If there's proper cloud, then no discolouration happens :)
I have no idea what these are called but I just thought I'd mention it :)
 
Number_6 :
Clayton Bailey dubbed his a SOLAR PYROSPHERE. But, then again, he gives things fanciful names. So I'm not sure if that's the proper term. (He also refers to a different instance as a SOLAR PYROGRAPH, which sounds like it fits.) Also, he used a lens, not a crystal ball.

erm.... I'm not veering offtopic, really...
 
That was enough to jog my memory :)
The thingy I'm on about is a Heliograph as far as I remember :)
 
Number_6 said:
..........The same effect's been used in devices to measure strength of sunlight, quite effectively.
Glass (Crystal?) ball is placed in a holder with a strip of thermal paper behind it, at the focal point. As the sun moves across the sky, the focus moves accordingly, and a hole is burnt in the paper if the sky is nice and clear or a mark is left by the heating of the paper if there's a hazy sky. ........
Click to expand...

I remembered these things too and like Number 6 couldn't remember what they were called. The length of the burn mark on the calibrated paper gives you the hours of sunshine.

After a bit of lateral googling final found one, it's called a Campbell-Stokes sunshine recorder:

http://www.gov.im/airport/virtual_tour/met/sun_recorder.html

and

http://www.brixworth.demon.co.uk/weathertour/sun.htm
 
Fiery crystal ball starts flat blaze
Press Association
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 11 August 2009

A crystal ball ornament caused a flat fire after magnifying the sun's rays and making a television explode.

Kim Yeates, a former BBC production assistant, praised "heroic" neighbour Neil Clarke after he saw the flames and jumped through a window at her home in Worle, Somerset to see if she was inside.

Yeates was meeting a friend in nearby Weston at the time and escaped the blaze caused by the globe, valued at £20.

The set blew up after the beam burned relentlessly on its side, creating a noise that could be heard several streets away.

Clarke, 28, a maintenance engineer, turned the gas taps off in nearby properties. The father of two then dived inside to see if Yeates was trapped. His partner Andrea Boardman, 38, was busy knocking on neighbours' doors to warn them of the fire which swept through the property. Yeates, 53, said: "My neighbours were so wonderful and Neil was a complete hero. People said they could hear the explosion three blocks away and he still went in to see if I was in there."

Only the bedrooms escaped being destroyed by the blaze at the first floor property which could take months to refurbish. Clarke said: "Because I am a qualified maintenance engineer I knew to turn the gas taps off."

A spokesman for Avon fire and rescue service said: "It's thought the fire started accidentally after sunlight refracting through a crystal ball on the windowsill had caused the curtains to catch fire, spreading to a nearby sofa, where a television had been placed on the sofa ready to be thrown away."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/aug/1 ... flat-blaze

Solar power Rules! 8)
 
AN AMATEUR psychic watched his flat go up in smoke - thanks to a blaze started by his crystal ball.

Herve Vandrot failed to predict the looming disaster when he left the mystic trinket on the windowsill of his Edinburgh home.

Instead of casting some light on the future, the crystal ball focused it on to a pile of clothes and set the place on fire.

And Frenchman Herve got home just in time to see smoke billowing out of the window.

The 24-year-old student was left with a burns to his hand after rushing into the blazing flat in a bid to save his university work.

But he was hauled outside as 35 firefighters arrived to tackle the inferno, which ended up destroying two other homes and damaging several more.

Last night, fire investigators said the blaze had been started by the crystal ball, which acted like a magnifying glass
Click to expand...

Source

SHAWNEE, Okla. - Firefighters in this central Oklahoma town peered into a crystal ball and found the cause for a fire.

It didn't take long for Shawnee Fire Prevention Officer Jimmy Gibson to figure out what caught a homeowner's sofa on fire and brought fire crews to the rescue.

Once the couch was extinguished, Gibson reached into a hole burnt into the sofa and found a glass gazing ball. Soon, sunlight shining through the ball burned two holes in the leg of his pants.

Firefighters then placed the ball in the grass, and within 30 seconds the ground was smoking.

"It has dynamic heat. We were caught off guard," Gibson said. "I couldn't believe how quickly it burned."

Firefighters believe the ball was taken off a table, where it was usually displayed, and placed on the couch by the homeowner's grandchildren. The fire started two days later, when sunshine came through a large set of windows and through the glass ball, igniting the couch.

"It's not something you run across every day," Gibson said. "I'd never seen it."

The fire set off a smoke detector, and the homeowner quickly called the fire department. No one was injured in the fire, which was confined to the sofa.

Gibson said he plans to keep the ball, which the homeowner gave him after the fire a couple weeks ago, on his bookshelf as a conversation piece.

He said the ball worked like a magnifying glass in sunlight, directing light into a heat beam.

Even if the ball was placed on a flat, nonflammable surface, the heat from sunlight could ignite a blaze on a rug or other items, Gibson said, so homeowners should be careful where they place such items.
Click to expand...

Source
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Number_6_uk said:
The same effect's been used in devices to measure strength of sunlight, quite effectively.
Glass (Crystal?) ball is placed in a holder with a strip of thermal paper behind it, at the focal point. As the sun moves across the sky, the focus moves accordingly, and a hole is burnt in the paper if the sky is nice and clear or a mark is left by the heating of the paper if there's a hazy sky. If there's proper cloud, then no discolouration happens :)
I have no idea what these are called but I just thought I'd mention it :)
Click to expand...
In the past and before the widespread introduction of inexpensive electronic sensors, BS (Bright Sunhine) was measured by a fairly primitive instrument called a Campbell-Stokes recorder. This consists of a small glass sphere that focuses the sun's image on to a rectangle of sensitive paper. As the sun moves across the sky it marks a trace on the paper, but only when the sunshine is strong enough to create a sufficiently hot focus. This instrument actually provides a simple operational way to distinguish BS and non-BS conditions - if a trace is marked then that period classifies as BS and conversely no visible trace implicitly means that no BS was recorded for that period.

This isn't of course an exact, scientifically well-defined distinction and it still requires an experienced user to set the paper correctly and, more importantly, to read the trace in a reliable manner. It's not easy, for example, on days with frequent short sunny intervals to locate the start and end of each individual trace consistently. And there are other imperfections with CS recorders such as the fact that sunshine is often too weak to burn a trace within a hour of sunrise or sunset even under conditions that would otherwise qualify as bright sunshine; traces also burn more readily in very dry compared to humid air.

Despite these limitations, for many years BS totals were almost by definition what was measured by a Campbell-Stokes recorder in the hands of an experienced user.

http://www.elyweather.co.uk/Sunshine1.aspx

I've actually used one of these, but I don't think I knew what it was called! It was in the late 70s when I was in the Coastguard at Hartland Point, Devon - we used to carry out certain met obs for the Met Office, sending them the results by teleprinter!


Anyhow, to get back on thread, a new firestarter story:

Sunlight sets fire to scarf at shool
By Gareth Davies
7:17am Monday 26th May 2014 in News

A fire started at a school when sunlight shone through a crystal ball and set light to a scarf.
Firefighters from Hove Community Fire Station were called to Lancing Preparatory School in The Droveway, Hove, when a classroom filled with smoke.

The fire had started by sunlight shining through a crystal ball which was near a scarf and the heat generated began to burn the scarf.

The firefighters were able to deal with the blaze on Friday evening by fanning out the smoke and an officer who attended the incident told The Argus that , although unusual, this was not the first time he had been called out to a scene like this.

He said: “It’s really unusual, and although it’s the first time I’ve ever been called out to a fire caused by a crystal ball, I did go to a fire a few years back which was started similarly.
“There was a little old lady working on a crossword and she was severely visually impaired.
“I can’t remember if it was a thick pair of reading glasses or a magnifying glass, but the sunlight came in through a balcony, through the glasses or magnifying glass and set her crossword alight.”

He said the incident could have been a lot worse if proposed cuts to the fire service had already taken place.
Firefighters were alerted to the fire by an electronic fire alarm control panel.

...

http://www.theargus.co.uk/news/11235889 ... l/?ref=rss
 
We have one in my daughter's room that sits on a plastic base that lights up.
Or at least it used to - I noticed the other day the plastic had melted on it. :shock:

Should really be health warnings with these things, they're clearly dangerous.
 
Maybe this is the real reason why psychics keep them covered up?
 
I remember reading in the local news a few years ago that this same thing happened in Poole, Dorset. A lady left a scrying ball in her window and her house caught fire. She didn't see that one coming :)
 
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