He began looking into the problem because arson suspects frequently claim a petrol fire was started by accident. "The person claims, 'I accidentally threw gasoline on my girlfriend, she was smoking and she burst into flames'," he said. To find out whether this was possible, he and colleagues experimented.
They dropped burning cigarettes into trays of petrol. They sprayed a fine mist of petrol at a lighted cigarette. They even used a vacuum device to produce the higher temperature (900-950C) of a cigarette being sucked.
In more than 2,000 attempts the petrol did not ignite. Dr Tontarski can only speculate why. The layer of ash on the tobacco, perhaps, or the petrol vapour convected away from the hottest part of the cigarette.
So is he in touch with Hollywood to demand it drops the explosive movie cliche? "Actually they are pretty well aware of it. They don't care.
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