"All Hands, Abandon Office!"
by Russell Stewart
You may have heard of humor columnist Dave Barry and his experiments involving the combustability of Strawberry Pop-Tarts. Well, he was telling the truth. On August 1, 1996, I put two of them into a toaster that, unbeknownst to me, was about to die. Unfortunately, the toaster wasn't willing to die by, say, losing its heating elements and fizzling out quietly. Oh no. It had to wait until I picked the most violently flammable consumer pastry product on the market, and then simply refuse to spring up. The result looked a lot like this:
Not only did it shoot about a foot and a half of flame into the air, but even when I extinguished the flame with our office's fire extinguisher (did I mention this all happened at the office, surrounded by cardboard boxes, paper printouts, and particle-board ceilings?), they waited about a second and then popped right up again, like some sort of nightmarish trick birthday candle. The heating elements were still red-hot and going strong, and it seemed that the toaster was plugged in behind the small refrigerator that it was sitting on. So I had to lean forward, with flames shooting up next to my face, pull the refrigerator forward, reach behind it to unplug the toaster, and THEN extinguish the flames once and for all. By this time, the room was not only filled with thick black smoke (which didn't even set off the damned fire alarms), but also with that fine, powdery substance that fire extinguishers use. I probably inhaled several spoonfuls of the stuff; I could taste it in my mouth for the next two hours. (BTW, if anybody reading this knows what that stuff is and the consequences, if any, of breathing it, I would really like to know).
Needless to say, this is not a difficult experiment to replicate. All you need are:
- One (or more) strawberry pop-tarts.
- A failing toaster.
http://www.sci.tamucc.edu/~pmichaud/toast/
Last modified: Sun Jul 24 13:01:36 Mountain Daylight Time 2005