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Was the light LED or some older light source?
If it was LED it must have been insanely bright.
To be fair even my small 4000 lumens flashlight can set fire to dark paper and pockets if you accidentally turn it on in one, so maybe it doesn't need to be that bright.
Watts is what sets fires, though. It's literally the "amount of energy delivered to the surrounding area per second"
1-2 kW is pretty typical for a single cooktop/hot plate or small space heater, so at least that same amount of energy put out by of those is going to be coming from that light. Some of that energy is in the form of the light, but at least a fair amount of it is heat, and "several thousand" could be a lot more than 1-2.
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Yes, I was just interested in how bright that light could be.
For example a 1 kW LED could be much brighter than a 1 kW incandescent light.
Also a halogen light will output a fuck ton more heat which might have contributed to the fire depending on how far away the person was from the light.
Iirc max efficiency of any light is around 600 lumens per watt, so a theoretically perfect light source that's 7000 watts would hit 4 or 5 million lumens. Probably more like 3 million for real, physical lights that are only 80% or so efficient.
That seems like a lot more than you need unless you're simulating the sun or something for a shot. So probably not an LED
I can weld with my eyes shut!
That is VERY HARD to do!
But it’s bad for my hat and makes my eyebrows get red hot.
so…
welding with my eyes shut I don’t do an awful lot.