No picture of the fire because I had to put it out! The scissors were normal paper scissors only used as an office supply. Nothing around them was affected. There's no trail or melted plastic anywhere else. Honestly, this pair of scissors just spontaneously combusted! I'm open to all theories, questions, or possible explanations.

The fire was put out by placing an empty metal popcorn bowl over the scissors. The scissors had been flat on the table whilst on fire. I then picked them up by the blades after a few minutes (still burnt myself), threw them in the bowl, and ran them to the sink to run cold water over them. That is how they got bent. I returned the scissors to the table for this photograph.

Scissors were about one year old, only used for cutting household packaging, wrapping paper, and copy paper.

They had been been used about an hour prior to open a bag of Smartpop. 3 witnesses. This occurred at night.

Some of you might have seen my previous posts on growing crystals at home.

This time, I was preparing some copper sulfate solution to grow large single crystals. But the solution was a little too concentrated. As a consequence, this huge mass decided the time was ripe to appear at the bottom of the container.

Anyway, I thought it was pretty cool.

I may not be well versed in the logistics of concert pyrotechnics, but I have a feeling that storing 16 compressed gas cylinders leaning against each other with no valve caps and only a ratchet strap keeping them upright all less than 5 feet from a crowd full of people in a poorly ventilated room is probablyyy not safe…

My grandma said that she made it like usual from some tea bags. I have no clue what could have caused this, no sweetener added or anything. She mentioned the bags were older.

The brother in law asked for some distilled water for his cpap but I don’t have any and all the stores are closed so I rigged a distillation apparatus out of some pots and pans for him.

Original post

After posting this, I did have a couple people send me messages (one with pictures) telling me that the same thing had happened to them with the same scissors. Each of these people had bought the same 3-pack of scissors from Costco around the same time. Something happened.

As requested by 3M, I sent the burnt scissors, plastic scrapings from the table (that probably included some of the table surface), and another pair of scissors from the 3-pack to their laboratory.

I had a lot of people asking for an update, and I finally received a letter yesterday from the manufacturing company.

Disappointedly, the cause of the fire was unable to be determined.

-both pairs of scissors were manufactured within their standard specifications

-they were not able to replicate the incident in any form

I was very surprised and overwhelmed by how many people were interested in the incident. It was a busy time of year with my work, but I tried my best to answer all questions on my original post. Just to reiterate: there was no heat source, flame, or refracted light when this happened.

Here's a picture of the scissors, the letter that they sent, and a picture of a little box of post-its and 3M products that they sent me (no scissors included 😂).

Sorry that this update is not very exciting. Maybe they'll do a bit about "The Spontaneously Combusting Scissors" scissors on Unsolved Mysteries one day (cue theme song music).

Some pure free base nicotine oil that I extracted out of some tobacco and vape products. Confirmed with 1H NMR

I’m not sure if this kind of post is allowed here, but it’s the only community I could think of that might be of help. My grandfather was a brilliant man and worked as a chemist for 3M for most of his career. I believe he worked extensively with film and had a patent on some kind of photographic paper. He was a huge influence in my life, although I didn’t go into science myself (I work in mental health), and unfortunately he passed away a year-and-a-half ago. I found his thesis recently while moving, and as a non-chemist, I don’t understand a word of it. I have no family left who knew my grandfather well or would be able to converse about this. I just want to know: since this was published back in 1964, a lot of time has passed, so is this information pretty well-known today? Would it have been considered innovative during its time? Is this something that could be easily researched with our technology today? I know this work basically took over his life at the time, and I don’t think future generations will ever understand the dedication it took to do research without the internet.

Anyway, I’d be grateful for any thoughts. I don’t understand the subject matter or what he was trying to prove, but I’m interested in knowing the relevance of his research in 1964 compared to today.

Edit: Wow, thank you so much for all of the appreciation for my grandfather’s work! I’m slowly getting around to all the comments. It was his greatest wish that others would come to understand and love chemistry and science the way he did. Also, my grandma did indeed type all of this! At the time they had a four-year-old (my mom) and a newborn (my uncle), so I really don’t know how they managed! They moved to Italy for several years after he finished this thesis, where my grandfather began his career for 3M. My grandparents lived a long life together—almost seventy years—and I miss them every day. They were the best, kindest, and most dedicated people I’ve ever known.