While enjoying his lunch break, a battery technician with the Idaho Power Company noticed smoke coming from under the center console of his truck. Dioni Amuchastegui was surprised to learn that a bottle of water was to blame.
“I looked over and noticed light was being refracted through a water bottle and starting to catch the seat on fire,” he explains in a video shared on Facebook. You can see just how dangerous it is from the two burn marks left on the seat of Dioni’s truck.
Firefighters are also warning drivers about the hazard. When Oklahoma’s Midwest City Fire Department ran tests, they found sunlight magnified by a water bottle got to be 250-degrees. “The sunlight will come through, when it’s filled with liquid, and act as a magnifying glass,” MCFD’s David Richardson explains."It uses the liquid and the clear material to develop a focused beam and sure enough, it can actually cause a fire, a combustion.”
While the risk of starting a fire this way is low, officials warn that we should all be bringing our water bottles with us when we leave the car. You can never be too safe!
Source: Country Living