You can normally hear sportscasters say that one
athlete is “on fire”. Of course, these sportscasters don’t mean that literally.
Such term can be heard if an athlete is playing unbelievably well. However,
according to a study from the University of California-Irvine, some golf
players can really set themselves on fire, literally with the golf club they
are using.
Fire-starting Clubs
The recent spate of devastating fires on golf courses in Irvin and
Mission Viejo got fire investigators thinking about what could have possibly
started these fire incidents. To get into the bottom of this, they have seek
the help of materials scientists to find definitive answers to these questions.
The scientists then looked for leads and ended up looking at golfing equipment,
particularly, golf clubs to find answers. And so the answers did come.
Based on the published findings by the journal
‘Fire and Materials’, the materials scientists found out that titanium-coated
golf clubs can cause an ignition, and possibly, fire if it strikes small
pebbles or rocks, igniting dry foliage. In the study, researchers simulated the
conditions in the golf courses where fires happened. With the use of high-speed
video as well as powerful scanning electron microscope analyses, the scientists
tried to find out if they hypothesis was indeed right.
