So I have this 100W clip on reading lamp on my night stand that I hardly use. On that same nightstand is my alarm clock. Well, the other night I turned on the reading lamp for something and it was too bright so to make it less bright I aimed it right down on my alarm clock, about 2 inches off the top of the clock. The room wasn’t much brighter than my actions,so I was happy. So I left the room to go cook some pizza rolls and didn’t come back for about 3 hours.
When I returned I found my clock had melted into a puddle of sorts. I could still read the clock, but I couldn’t set it, turn on the alarm, the radio, or anything. IT looked like a cheese pizza or something. I amlucky I didn’t burn down my apt building.
Anyone else ever melt anything by accident? Not much fun.
Back when I was a kid, a friend and I found a toy at a garage sale called (I think) a “Creature Caster”. Basically it was a little plug-in hotplate with little metal moulds of Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolfman, etc. I think the idea was that you were supposed to squirt in some kind of liquid goo, bake it, and voilá, little rubber monsters (ah, the 60’s. The last refuge of hot, sharp, breakable choking-hazard toys).
Anyway, since we didn’t have any of this goo, we hacked up his sisters favorite Barbie doll and melted chunks of her in the moulds with limited success. This kept us occupied until cartoons came on, then we drifted off to watch the tube.
Of course we didn’t unplug it.
About three or four hours later we returned to find a saucer-sized crater melted in the faux-woodgrain plastic table, complete with stringy, drippy stalagtites of brown melted plastic running down to the Creature Caster, which was now on the floor in a puddle. Thankfully this was in a concrete floored garage.
After weighing various schemes for explaining ourselves we opted to just chuck the table and plead ignorance should it be missed (it wasn’t, though Barbie missing arms brought us some heat). The only lasting damage was to the garages concrete floor, as it a few good whacks with a hammer to dislodge the melted mess.