Yes, afaik in science community that is in fact the correct use of the word, meaning from “environmental” conditions (well, it’s test conditions for the environment in this case) and not from an active, localised influence.
I mean, if you put some stuff in a room, then slowly start to heat the room up, would you describe the things — which will at one point or another catch fire —as “spontaneously” combusting?
I’m not arguing the use is wrong here, just a thought I had.
Yes, actually. The autoignition point is the temperature at which a given material will spontaneously (as in, without a spark or the like) catch fire, given a source of oxygen.
Yes, that is why I used the quotation marks & further explained that the “heat up the room” in your case would be ‘a simulation of environment’.
Eg, a tree at 20°C has an extremely low chance of spontaneously combusting into a self-fueling oxidation event (lol, shit’s on fire, yo) in your average environment, but those chances at 200°C are much higher.
In order to test this spontaneous combustion theory (whilst having no regard for the life of the tree) you would need to simulate that 200°C environmental conditions. … by heating the air around the tree.
In that case you would heat up a chamber or whatever and in turn eventually maybe burn the tree.
This wound still test/prove the spontaneous combustibility thing.
You bringing open flame in contact with the tree however would not* be that - that is just actively (non-spontaneously) starting a reaction.
This is an experiment trying to test some natural conditions. Every test as such (eg if witnessed by a clueless alien observer) is you doing something actively so ofc none of it is spontaneous.
*unless the environmental conditions you were testing/simulating would be “open 1000° flames/plasma completely everywhere” … but you may not get a grant for testing “if wood added to fire also burns”
Yes, afaik in science community that is in fact the correct use of the word, meaning from “environmental” conditions (well, it’s test conditions for the environment in this case) and not from an active, localised influence.
I mean, if you put some stuff in a room, then slowly start to heat the room up, would you describe the things — which will at one point or another catch fire —as “spontaneously” combusting?
I’m not arguing the use is wrong here, just a thought I had.
Yes, actually. The autoignition point is the temperature at which a given material will spontaneously (as in, without a spark or the like) catch fire, given a source of oxygen.
Yes, that is why I used the quotation marks & further explained that the “heat up the room” in your case would be ‘a simulation of environment’.
Eg, a tree at 20°C has an extremely low chance of spontaneously combusting into a self-fueling oxidation event (lol, shit’s on fire, yo) in your average environment, but those chances at 200°C are much higher.
In order to test this spontaneous combustion theory (whilst having no regard for the life of the tree) you would need to simulate that 200°C environmental conditions. … by heating the air around the tree.
In that case you would heat up a chamber or whatever and in turn eventually maybe burn the tree.
This wound still test/prove the spontaneous combustibility thing.
You bringing open flame in contact with the tree however would not* be that - that is just actively (non-spontaneously) starting a reaction.
This is an experiment trying to test some natural conditions. Every test as such (eg if witnessed by a clueless alien observer) is you doing something actively so ofc none of it is spontaneous.
*unless the environmental conditions you were testing/simulating would be “open 1000° flames/plasma completely everywhere” … but you may not get a grant for testing “if wood added to fire also burns”
“Spontaneous” in this usage is highly dependent on frame of reference.