Comments on: Exploding cell phone shocks 911 dispatcher

Motorola phone burns through emergency worker's jacket pocket and explodes, filling the room with smoke.

[egolpe]

Just call 911...

Does anyone want to know WHY a 911 dispatcher HAD or NEEDS a cellphone inside a sophisticated communications center with plenty of radios and trunk lines? I surely would like to know. If you ask me Motorola should investigate the 911 centers administration staff and also why a public safety worker (even a dispatcher) is using a NON-INSTRINSICALLY SAFE communications device not made speciafically for PUBLIC SERVICE inside a comm center. Duh!

[aabcdefghij987654321]

Think before you talk,..

Did it ever occur to you that it was a PERSONAL cell phone? The story made it obvious to everyone else, why didn't you pick up the clues?

[lopipops]

she is using personal phone for her personal needs why in ur office are you using uyour office equiptments for your personal use

Cellphone bombs, coming to an airplane near you?

The FAA or someone needs to act fast on this one, its only a matter of time before terrorists are carrying cellphones modified to explode in this manner onboard planes.

Worse yet, why stop with cellphone batteries, you can mix it up with an iPod, a laptop, etc. Batteries are becoming more and more powerful and its only a short while before we see the advent of batteries capable of holding enough energy to power cellphones and laptops for months on end. These batteries will need to have special safegaurds in place to stop them from being turned into bombs or else this whole hubbub about being able to use a cellphone onboard an airplane will be moot because they'll have to ban cellphones, pdas and laptops because of the threat.

Or am I just paranoid?

I hope so.

[Fray9]

Well

Well the problem is that the explosion of the battery is usually the result of a short circuit in the battery causing the chemicals that create the energy to react at a faster rate than normal.

This results in greater generation of heat and waste gasses. The gasses are normally vented through the seams and holes in the batterys casing. However if the gasses are created faster than they can be vented, pressure builds up and the casing pops like a balloon. This is the "explosion" that is alarming people.

This sort of effect barely rates a catagorization as a low explosive.

Even with greater capacity, unless the battery is designed for a very rapid reaction resulting in large quantities of gasous byproducts, it will never reach the destructive capacities of a high grade explosive, which derives most of its destructive power from a shockwave created by the gasses released expanding faster than the speed of sound.

So as you can see unless the batteries are fundamentally redesigned with the intent of making them more powerfully explosive, there is little cause for concern. Its is highly unlikely a battery will ever be created that will exceed the force generated by modern batteries reaching the maximum pressure the plastic casing can contain structurally. Even if the reaction was several orders of magnitude more efficient in gas production and reaction speed it still would only be a plastic pipe bomb that would fail to create significant pressure before the casing failed and it detonated with negligable force.

[davidclementz]

exploding cell phone

I had new motorla 250 for 3 months.It exploded in my kitchen and cought my house on fire. motorla sent me a new phone. and I have to pay for the $35000 fire THANK`s MOTOROLA [e-mail]