The Inquirer is reporting on a Dell laptop that supposedly spontaneously combusted at a conference in Japan. It appears they put it out witha jug of icewater.

No details on why the laptop suddenly exploded into flame. While I don’t doubt that the laptop was on fire, I’m a little skeptical of the reasons why it set on fire so voraciously. The brightness of the initial flame seems to indicate a very white light that seems to hint at magnesium. Also, the reader mentions the laptop is a Dell, and then in the same sentance starts talking about all of the situations where this could be catastrophic. They also mention the laptop had several other explosions while it sat burning for five minutes, but the last picture given has very little smoke in the room…kinda fishy.
I’m looking forward to seeing what, exactly, the reason for the flame-up was. In the meantime, add this to the lists of pranks NOT to pull at work: loading a laptop up with magnesium shavings. (If that is what happened)

by the way, does anyone know if images of a flame will be useful to a spectrum analyzer? For example, if I put an image of a propane flame on the screen, would an analyzer work?

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