Why did my pot filled with water spill all over the floor? I had a cold so I was heating water in a pot, forgot that I had been heating this pot and went to sleep. Then woke up to a loud crash. The pot with the hot water has spilled all over the floor. Which was bizarre and I thought the only outcome of forgetting this task would be an empty pot. What could have displaced this pot from my stove?
For detail, I was using a metal pot in the shape of a cylinder with no top with a plastic handle, stove was fuelled by butane.
 A: This is a guess, but if the pot was boiling (even without boiling over) the pot can vibrate a little and any slight imbalance on the stove rings can mean it gradually shifts position towards one side.  Eventualy it can move enough to be unstable and simply fall over.
I'm assuming you don't have cats or dogs or similar.
A: It's very likely that vibration caused it to shift over, but not vibration of the boiling water; rather vibration of the metal pot itself.  Any solid object that is not perfectly flat will establish 3 points of contact with another solid object. It is likely that your pot has a slightly curved bottom surface.  What happens is that two of the contact points act as a fulcrum. The third contact point heats and expands, causing the pot to tilt over to a fourth contact point on the other side.  This allows the third contact point to cool and contract, and the pot tilts back over again.  This can happen over and over again very quickly, causing the pot to vibrate and slide sideways.
