A bottle of water caused a fire in the cockpit of a Airbus A320 passenger aircraft as it was about to land at a Queensland airport.
According to an Australian Transport Safety Bureau report, the pilots were lining up on the runway when they smelled smoke last month.
It was coming from the cover of a log carried in the cockpit to record inflight defects in mechanical, navigation, electrical, hydraulic and radio equipment, The Courier-Mail reports.
The incident was reported to the bureau, which investigated and concluded a water bottle was to blame.
“The sun was shining through a water bottle at the side of the cockpit,” the ATSB report said.
“The bottle was focusing the sunlight like a magnifying glass on the cover of the cabinet defect log, which began burning.”
Source: The Courier Mail
By: B77W - 24th April 2009 at 11:35
Interesting… Theoretically it could happen, still quite unbelievable it has.
(as I haven’t studied optics yet!)
You don’t know what you’re missing… 😀
By: tomfellows - 24th April 2009 at 01:59
This does sound plausible although I’d be quite interested in seeing the full report. I’ve just been looking through my textbook (as I haven’t studied optics yet!) and the magnification from the water bottle could of course magnify the energy in the rays into a small point. Basically to get high magnification you need quite a pronounced curvature on the lens (in this case the bottle). It probably happened in this case that the focal length was where the logbook was. Of course there are loads of different variables here, such as whether the bottle was deformed in any way etc.. It just goes to show how something so innocuous can cause a problem.
I’ve heard stories like this before except with water bottles in cars causing burn marks. Slightly different case, but I remember a news item where a bedroom was destroyed by a fire caused by sunlight being focused by an ornament.
By: PMN - 24th April 2009 at 01:20
Someone call the Mythbusters to check this out!
I have to admit, I wouldn’t have really thought the optical precision of a bottle of water would be sufficient to focus a beam of light enough to start a fire. I need to see proof of this one I’m afraid! 😀
Paul
By: J Boyle - 24th April 2009 at 00:09
While I don’t doubt the ATSB, I wouldn’t have thought that was possible with tinted windows and the like.
Someone call the Mythbusters to check this out!
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April 24, 2009 at 12:04 am