#8: This Bowl is on Fire
How often do you see chips catch on fire? Not often, we suppose. Putting some chips into a bowl is nothing out of the ordinary, especially if you’re having friends over or getting ready for a night of Netflix and chill. But if you put chips in a stainless bowl and place the bowl directly in sunlight, you might have your chips catch on fire.
The bowl acted as a parabolic mirror by collecting sunlight on its surface and projecting the light onto the bowl’s contents, causing one of the chips to catch on fire—as you can see in the picture above. Direct light at a certain intensity might cause an object in its path to catch on fire—that makes sense, but we never think it’s actually going to happen. It seems so wild!