TIL Ray Bradbury first titled Fahrenheit 451 βThe Firemanβ, then called a local fire station to ask what temperature it would take to actually ignite books. The responding firemen placed him on hold and burnt a book, then reported that the heat required was βFahrenheit 451β³.
via reddit.com
Thatβs such a fire fighter thing to do.
βYou know what? Thatβs a good question. Iβm gonna put you on hold while I find outβ
My dad used to design kitchens at Loweβs and one day he got a dude from one of the national labs looking to buy a countertop. Dad sent him home with a sample of a quartz-composite countertop to make sure the color will look good with his existing cabinets. The dude asks my dad what the composition of the countertop is and whether itβll melt if he puts a pot on it (since itβs a composite and not pure stone) and Dad gives him some rough numbers and reassures him that it wonβt melt if he puts a hot pan on the counter. The dude comes back with week later without the sample. The dude gives dad a detailed list of the countertops composition, to the nearest hundredth of a percentile, and the exact temperature it melts at, because he took it to his lab and melted it down. tldr, itβs not just firefighters.
Imagine giving someone a sample of the granite you use to make countertops and they come back a few days later just to tell you they fucking dematerialized it
Ok, but this is just, like, what people do if they have access to equipment. We justβ¦ put shit in it. Just to see. At this point, Iβll try and hit just about anything with an arc, just to see. Iβll sand and polish anything youβll let me, if Iβm bored enough. If I had a machine that could melt something down and tell me exactly what was in it? Iβd be just waiting for parts of my world to become βtrashβ so I could de-materialize it and turn it into knowledge of what it was.
