Fahrenheit 451: What's The Temperature At Which E-Books Burn?
I promise we're not making a comment. This is just the first image that came up when we googled "book burning." INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images hide caption
I promise we're not making a comment. This is just the first image that came up when we googled "book burning."
INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty ImagesFrom our How To Do Everything podcast:
Today, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 was released as an e-book for the first time. If you're not familiar, it takes place in a dystopia where firemen burn books — 451 degrees being the temperature at which they catch fire. But what about e-Books? Theo Gray, a columnist with Popular Science, told us:
The one big advantage you've got when you're trying to burn an e-Book reader is that a good fraction of the total volume is lithium polymer batteries. Which are really flammable. There have been incidents of these things — defective ones — they set themselves on fire. You don't even need to help them. And when they do ... I mean, it's spectacular.
How does Theo know?
I collected a bunch of old laptop batteries, and grilled them to set them off, and they'll shoot like a rocket 100 feet in the air, shooting flaming balls behind them.
This seems like a good time to mention Theo is author of a book called Mad Science: Experiments You Can Do At Home But Probably Shouldn't.
Anyway, because it has so many different components — the lithium polymer batteries, the organic solvents, the plastic casing — it's tough to measure the temperature at which an e-Book reader burns. But Theo says at its peak, you're looking at 1,000 to 1,500 degrees somewhere.
So if you're looking to create a dystopia in which human expression is all but extinguished, now you know.