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SYSK Selects: How Fire Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hi, folks. From October four, two thousand twelve. My Saturday
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Speaker 1: select pick is how fire works. Yeah, you can light
0:10
Speaker 1: a match, Sure, you can use a magnifying glass, and
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Speaker 1: you might be able to rub two sticks together or
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Speaker 1: use a flint in stone. But that is all just
0:19
Speaker 1: starting a fire. How fire actually works is much more
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Speaker 1: complicated and very very cool. So give it a listen.
0:24
Speaker 1: Why don't you welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a
0:30
Speaker 1: production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and
0:38
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me. It's
0:41
Speaker 1: always as Charles w. Chuckle Bryant said, and uh, this
0:45
Speaker 1: is stuff you should know, Josh. We let me stand
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Speaker 1: next to your fire. Sure, okay, come come over here
0:54
Speaker 1: right now? Okay, sorry, Well it's nice and warm over here,
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Speaker 1: isn't it. I'm feverish. It's smoky, and I feel like
1:02
Speaker 1: there's chemical reactions taking place before my very eyes. There are.
1:05
Speaker 1: That's why there's fire. If fire is nothing if not
1:08
Speaker 1: a chemical reaction. Yeah, I got so. Okay. Have you
1:15
Speaker 1: heard of the Wine Cooff Hotel? Yeah? But born and
1:21
Speaker 1: raised here? Ye? Uh, the Allis Hotel? Was that the
1:24
Speaker 1: hotel fire? Yeah? Yeah, you know that it's now the
1:26
Speaker 1: Ellis Hotel. It's at the corner of Peach Tree and Ellis.
1:29
Speaker 1: Nice referbish hotel. Back in it was called the Wine
1:33
Speaker 1: Coff Hotel and it was the site of the most
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Speaker 1: disastrous casualty wise hotel fire in US history. In December
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Speaker 1: nineteen people died right right here in Atlanta, very said
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Speaker 1: forty four. Just under forty four years later, in Las Vegas, Nevada,
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Speaker 1: the MGM Grand had a hotel fire. People died. Do
1:55
Speaker 1: you remember the MGM fire GM Grand fire? It was
1:58
Speaker 1: a big deal, not at all, you you. I'm surprised
2:01
Speaker 1: because I kind of remember, like seeing footage of that.
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Speaker 1: When was this? Oh no, I don't remember. So both
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Speaker 1: of these fires and all the loss of life associated
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Speaker 1: with them were the direct result of hubris towards fire.
2:16
Speaker 1: The Wine Cough their fire exits one stairwell for the
2:20
Speaker 1: whole building. I think it was like nineteen stories or
2:23
Speaker 1: something like that. Um, the MGM Grand, they they didn't
2:29
Speaker 1: put up like sixty dollars for a fire detection system
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Speaker 1: in this one part of the hotel that would have
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Speaker 1: saved everyone's lives. A part hubrist, part of financial shenanigans, right,
2:39
Speaker 1: But isn't that kind of based on Hubris. My point
2:43
Speaker 1: is is that if there's one thing that we shouldn't
2:45
Speaker 1: have hubris towards its fire. Agreed. Do you think we
2:49
Speaker 1: might control fire thanks to Prometheus being given it by
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Speaker 1: the gods? Yep? But fire controls us when it really
2:57
Speaker 1: comes down to it. That's right. You gotta face off
2:59
Speaker 1: a tete a tete fire. You're gonna lose, buddy, because
3:02
Speaker 1: you're combustible. Yeah. And so also we should say here
3:06
Speaker 1: that this fire as um it should be a prequel
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Speaker 1: to the how wildfires work and how um spontantaneous human
3:14
Speaker 1: combustion works. Those two episodes were great. Agreed, This will
3:18
Speaker 1: seal up our triumvirate, and now we're going to explain
3:21
Speaker 1: how fire works. Yeah. I do have a couple of
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Speaker 1: quick stats. We're talking about the deadly nature of fire
3:27
Speaker 1: does kill more people than any other force of nature.
3:30
Speaker 1: I couldn't find that any source for that, but I
3:34
Speaker 1: still I was searching for it, and it brought up
3:36
Speaker 1: like a handful of plagiarized versions of this article on
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Speaker 1: the internet. Really. Yeah, those are always fun, especially when
3:42
Speaker 1: it's your own. This one is not mine. This is
3:44
Speaker 1: a bill Hart, Tom Harris, Tom Harris. UM, But I
3:47
Speaker 1: do have some stats in the US, at least in
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Speaker 1: two thousand ten for residential building fires, over people died
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Speaker 1: that year, And that's sort of in the wheelhouse. It
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Speaker 1: fluctuates between uh about thirty hundred a year from building fires. Uh.
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Speaker 1: Cooking is far and away the leading cause of a
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Speaker 1: building fire, and arson is number two. Huh, which I
4:11
Speaker 1: would have thought, like falling asleep with a cigarette would
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Speaker 1: would be above arson. UM and then total in two
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Speaker 1: thousand nine, and I guess this counts like any kind
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Speaker 1: of fire in the US, they were close to thirty
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Speaker 1: deaths that year, so that you know, that's a lot. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I mean that's more than um, I'm sure killed by
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Speaker 1: volcanoes in the US every year. I think you're right,
4:35
Speaker 1: you know, yes, that's just one or two people falling
4:37
Speaker 1: into kill awea from getting too close. Have you seen
4:41
Speaker 1: that footage of that scientists going, Um, he's collecting some
4:45
Speaker 1: sort of I guess magma from an active volcano in Hawaii,
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Speaker 1: and um, it was really nerve racking because he goes up,
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Speaker 1: takes the sample. He's climbing up the rim and then
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Speaker 1: climbs back down and right when he steps away from it,
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Speaker 1: the magma come up over the rim exactly where he'd
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Speaker 1: just been climbing like five minutes before, and so it
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Speaker 1: would have like just just completely disintegrated him. I imagine
5:09
Speaker 1: what did he say. I don't know, like, holy crap,
5:12
Speaker 1: did you just see that? Well, the guy who was
5:14
Speaker 1: filming it was like narrating like this is so stupid. Yeah,
5:19
Speaker 1: it's very cool. I don't know what you'd search, but
5:21
Speaker 1: it's up there on the internet somewhere search wa pony
5:24
Speaker 1: wou and that should do it, so Chuck. The Greeks
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Speaker 1: thought that fire was one of the four elements earth wire, water,
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Speaker 1: wind and fire. Earth wind and fire and water and
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Speaker 1: nash and young silly Greeks. Uh. The reason why that
5:42
Speaker 1: doesn't really hold up is because um, earth, fire, air,
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Speaker 1: these are elements. They're matter, Yeah, they're made up of atoms.
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Speaker 1: Fire is the physical manifestation of matter changing form. It's
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Speaker 1: pretty cool, like when you think of it that way.
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Speaker 1: We're going to describe how this happens. Alright, I can
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Speaker 1: tackle some of this. Chemistry is not my forte but
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Speaker 1: it is a chemical reaction at its core between oxygen
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Speaker 1: and um fuel, which I mean, we'll probably let's talk
6:17
Speaker 1: about like a camp fire. Let's go with wood. Wood
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Speaker 1: fire is probably the easiest way to describe it. But
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Speaker 1: the wood is the fuel. The wood is the fuel.
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Speaker 1: Oxygen is found in the air, that's right. But for
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Speaker 1: these things to uh make fire, you gotta have something
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Speaker 1: called combustion, yeah, and which means you're gonna have have
6:34
Speaker 1: some sort of a spark. Um. Well, actually not always,
6:38
Speaker 1: because as we find out, some things can combust without
6:40
Speaker 1: a spark. I think if they get hot enough, like
6:43
Speaker 1: the heat is just so intense that it doesn't need
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Speaker 1: any spark, right, Yeah, But for wood, you have to
6:49
Speaker 1: get it up to um. Uh it's ignition temperature, which
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Speaker 1: is about three d degrees fahrenheit fifty degrees cel, which
6:58
Speaker 1: is where you're gonna start seeing some smoke because that
7:01
Speaker 1: is cellulose burning away. Uh. And it just occurred to
7:04
Speaker 1: me reading this today, like where there's smoke, there's fire.
7:07
Speaker 1: Not true, yeah, because things can smoke without there being
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Speaker 1: a fire. Yeah. Actually a byproduct of fire. You know,
7:14
Speaker 1: um doesn't smoke, so I guess in order to if
7:18
Speaker 1: you're one of the people that now says the bottom
7:21
Speaker 1: of the totem pole or instead of top of the
7:24
Speaker 1: totem pole. Then we can further reinforce this obnoxious quality
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Speaker 1: by encouraging you to say, where there's smoke, there is ignition,
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Speaker 1: temperature of a combustible fuel, there's volatile gases. It's nice
7:38
Speaker 1: way to go chucked. All right, thanks? So, yeah, heat
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Speaker 1: is heat decomposes fuel where wills to say would and
7:45
Speaker 1: in the case of would, specifically, it decomposes the um
7:49
Speaker 1: volatile gases contained in the solid matter. Right, So these
7:52
Speaker 1: volatile gases start to heat up themselves, and while they're
7:55
Speaker 1: doing that, the cellulose, the solid stuff is decomposing in
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Speaker 1: turning into what's called char. Yeah, I got a little
8:02
Speaker 1: thing on cell cellulostional Q and then you can just
8:06
Speaker 1: take a home, no man, because that's where I get confused.
8:08
Speaker 1: I'm confused to cellulose about of what is cellulose, And
8:14
Speaker 1: that's what like, that's where you make paper, that's what
8:16
Speaker 1: you make paper from. That's what you make cellulosic ethanol from, too,
8:19
Speaker 1: and it's what you make cellophane out of. Cellophane is
8:25
Speaker 1: regenerated cellulose. So it's it's like it looks like plastic,
8:30
Speaker 1: but it's not. I had no idea. It is a
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Speaker 1: man made as I'm sorry, it's a natural polymer. Plastic
8:35
Speaker 1: is manmade obviously, So cellophane is nothing more than regenerated
8:41
Speaker 1: paper in a way. Wow, like they had some other
8:44
Speaker 1: stuff to it. But that's why it's biodegradable. And I
8:47
Speaker 1: always wonder why. I like, supposedly cellophane is biodegradable. It's like,
8:51
Speaker 1: that's impossible. It's plastic, but it's not plastic. There's this
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Speaker 1: old cellophane and from like the fifties maybe, and it's
8:58
Speaker 1: like good things coming twos and it's like these this
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Speaker 1: pair of twins wrapped in cellophane, Oh my god, and
9:06
Speaker 1: they're just like kind of looking around. But yeah, you
9:08
Speaker 1: can imagine they only have them in there for a
9:10
Speaker 1: few seconds before they snapped the picture. For I did
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Speaker 1: not know that about cellophane. Back to the podcast right there,
9:16
Speaker 1: and I don't know about that. Hats off to you
9:18
Speaker 1: all right back to you know, I know what the
9:20
Speaker 1: fact of the podcast is. You're gonna save it for
9:22
Speaker 1: when it comes. We gotta save it. Okay. So, um,
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Speaker 1: you've got the cellulose, the solid matter of wood separating
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Speaker 1: now from the volatile um gases that are starting to
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Speaker 1: lift off. That's smoke, right, yes, Okay, the wood, the
10:04
Speaker 1: solid matter starting to turn into char um. And that
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Speaker 1: is basically if you if you burn would if you
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Speaker 1: heat it up and you separate the gases, which are
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Speaker 1: the smoke, what remains is carbon and what what charcoal
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Speaker 1: is is charred wood that's had the volatile gases burned
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Speaker 1: out of it, which is why when you have a
10:26
Speaker 1: charcoal fire, you don't have smoke, yeah, or not much
10:29
Speaker 1: at least, yeah, because the gases have already been burned off. Yeah,
10:34
Speaker 1: and charcoal too. That got that kind of got me
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Speaker 1: on charcoal filtering because these charcoal is a filter and
10:40
Speaker 1: I think these it is a scrubber two on smoke stacks.
10:43
Speaker 1: And uh, if you're like I did some of those
10:46
Speaker 1: survival articles at one point, and one of the things
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Speaker 1: you can do to purify water is take your char
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Speaker 1: from your fire, put it in like you know, cool
10:55
Speaker 1: it down obviously and then put it in. Then put
10:58
Speaker 1: it in like a hanky and in running creek water
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Speaker 1: through that to collect it underneath. That's awesome. And uh,
11:06
Speaker 1: and there's like real charcoal filters too. But apparently charcoal
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Speaker 1: has a quality because once it's pure carbon like that,
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Speaker 1: it um has a knack for filtering out things like
11:17
Speaker 1: impurities like chlorine and letting other stuff get through. So
11:21
Speaker 1: that's why it's used as a filter. Yeah, because essentially
11:24
Speaker 1: what you're making is a carbon filter. Yeah. Charcoal is
11:28
Speaker 1: like basically pure carbon with all the impurities burned off. Yeah,
11:31
Speaker 1: those impurities burned off as smoke. They're volatile gases, So
11:34
Speaker 1: it's pretty neat. Yeah, that's pretty awesome, little survival tip man,
11:37
Speaker 1: you're killing it today? Well now that this is when
11:40
Speaker 1: I go to sleep though. Okay, So, um, the third
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Speaker 1: component of burned wood, You've got the volatile gases smoke,
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Speaker 1: you have the char the charcoal, which is carbon, and
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Speaker 1: then you have ash, which is unburnable minerals like um,
11:54
Speaker 1: calcium or phosphorus, I believe. Yeah, And if you like
11:58
Speaker 1: you ever cooked with brick ets, charcoal, briqutts, you're gonna
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Speaker 1: get a lot more ash with that because it has
12:03
Speaker 1: a lot of more like byproducts in it. Then if
12:05
Speaker 1: you use like real wood charcoal, right, but they're not
12:07
Speaker 1: gonna smoke, They're just not gonna burn. It's just gonna
12:09
Speaker 1: be left over. Like you can't get rid of it.
12:11
Speaker 1: You can pounded into oblivion, but it's still there. Yeah.
12:14
Speaker 1: But if you use the real wood coal then a char,
12:16
Speaker 1: then you'll notice you don't get a lot of that stuff.
12:19
Speaker 1: Oh is that right? Yeah? Okay, but the cats aren't
12:22
Speaker 1: as nasty a synthetic Brits. No, they're made from char
12:26
Speaker 1: and like binding agents and stuff like that. And saw that. No.
12:29
Speaker 1: I actually used to hear that, like, oh, you can't
12:32
Speaker 1: cook with briquettes are so nasty. But they're really I
12:34
Speaker 1: looked into it. It's not super nasty. I mean you
12:37
Speaker 1: probably should cook with siwihere in between nasty and super nasty. Yeah,
12:41
Speaker 1: well it's not. It's not as bad as I thought.
12:44
Speaker 1: I thought it was like a bunch of chemical agents
12:46
Speaker 1: and glue and cement, and that's not the case. I
12:49
Speaker 1: got to It's not the hot dogs of cooking materials.
12:53
Speaker 1: That's the corn dog. Okay, um okay, So we've got
12:57
Speaker 1: the components right, yeah. Um. As these volatile um gases
13:03
Speaker 1: continue to heat up um too about five degrees fahrenheit
13:08
Speaker 1: two six degrees celsius, they the molecules break apart, and
13:15
Speaker 1: when they break apart, they go to combine with oxygen
13:20
Speaker 1: oxidation right um. And the same thing happens with the
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Speaker 1: carbon in the wood, but this takes pace in place
13:25
Speaker 1: much more slowly. But one of the the stars of
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Speaker 1: this chemical reaction, this change of breaking down to these
13:32
Speaker 1: molecules and then the recombining into other things like carbon dioxide,
13:36
Speaker 1: carbon monoxide. Water. Isn't that weird that fire produces water? Um,
13:41
Speaker 1: that's why sometimes you have steam coming from a fire,
13:44
Speaker 1: right um. The star of all this chemical reactions, all
13:49
Speaker 1: these chemical reactions is heat is produced. Heat, energy is released,
13:53
Speaker 1: which allows us to cook and be comfortable and feel
13:56
Speaker 1: secure and all the good stuff that comes with fire exactly.
13:59
Speaker 1: And because of the heat that's released as these things
14:02
Speaker 1: are heated up, Um, it is sustainable. That means a
14:06
Speaker 1: fire is sustainable so long as there's fuel and there's
14:09
Speaker 1: oxygen present. Yeah. That was the kind of creepy part,
14:13
Speaker 1: or not creepy, but it's self perpetuating, like that flame
14:16
Speaker 1: is gonna heat up any fuel near it to the
14:19
Speaker 1: point where it can release those gases to recombine with oxygen.
14:24
Speaker 1: It's pretty elegant if you think about it. Yeah. Another
14:28
Speaker 1: big star of fire besides heat is light, and part
14:33
Speaker 1: of that is from the same um the carbon atoms right, yeah,
14:37
Speaker 1: that are combining, that are being torn apart. The molecules
14:41
Speaker 1: that UM form up the char breaking down in their
14:45
Speaker 1: constituent carbon atoms when they combine with oxygen, right recombine, Yeah,
14:51
Speaker 1: I think that would make carbon monoxide. But as they
14:55
Speaker 1: change um, they they're electrons will go up and erge
15:00
Speaker 1: level will change orbit and when they come back down
15:03
Speaker 1: they emit. They release some of that energy that they
15:06
Speaker 1: have and they release it in the form of photons.
15:09
Speaker 1: They produce light um and indescence, right, Yeah, it's it's
15:14
Speaker 1: heat producing light. Like we talked about bioluminescence, where basically
15:18
Speaker 1: heat up a filament in a light bulb and it glows.
15:22
Speaker 1: That's the same thing with the fire. It's the same
15:23
Speaker 1: based on the same principle, which is incandescence. Pretty awesome
15:27
Speaker 1: and depending on the temperature, uh, different colored light is
15:32
Speaker 1: going to be produced. Yeah, Like uh you remember the
15:36
Speaker 1: bunsen burners back in chemistry class and how the buns
15:39
Speaker 1: and burners have little slots on the side that you
15:41
Speaker 1: can vary the amount of like oxygen getting in there.
15:45
Speaker 1: You know, there's the little flickering orange flame of a
15:47
Speaker 1: buns and burner. Then if you let a lot more
15:49
Speaker 1: oxygen in, it's going to be more Uh, it's gonna
15:52
Speaker 1: be more hot. And that's why that's when it's gonna
15:55
Speaker 1: be that blue jet the same as when you see
15:58
Speaker 1: like a jet plane, like right next to where the
16:00
Speaker 1: flame comes out, it's gonna be like really blue, and
16:02
Speaker 1: then it gets more orange and yellow, you know, like
16:05
Speaker 1: the Batmobile. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. I know
16:08
Speaker 1: exactly original bile No. Um, we've seen a bunch of
16:11
Speaker 1: batmobiles recently. There's a documentary about the Batmobile. That's what
16:16
Speaker 1: all those were there for a comic con. Okay, we
16:19
Speaker 1: had a mum and I had our picture taken with
16:20
Speaker 1: it with which one the new one, the tumbler, that's
16:27
Speaker 1: what they called the new one, is it? Yeah? The
16:29
Speaker 1: Chrystalin one is called the tongue. The chrystal one was.
16:31
Speaker 1: It's awesome, It's pretty cool. Uh so yeah. The the
16:35
Speaker 1: reason why the blue one happens to be a different
16:38
Speaker 1: color and hotter is because there's more energy being released,
16:41
Speaker 1: that's right. Uh. The lower energy and slightly less hot
16:46
Speaker 1: part of the flame that glows orange yellow is at
16:49
Speaker 1: the top and um, the reason the flame is pointed
16:53
Speaker 1: this is this is pretty awesome, not the fact of
16:55
Speaker 1: the podcast. The space part is okay, I think, all right,
17:00
Speaker 1: go ahead. Then, So a flame is pointed and it
17:02
Speaker 1: burns upward because the gases that are burning what you're
17:06
Speaker 1: burning right there are volatile gases. They're being burned off
17:09
Speaker 1: right um as they as they burn there, they're hotter,
17:15
Speaker 1: but they're also less dance and they're moving upward towards
17:19
Speaker 1: the less dense air above it, which causes it to
17:22
Speaker 1: be pointed. But if you were to light you take
17:25
Speaker 1: it for granted, but it's kind of cool to know
17:27
Speaker 1: how that works. Yeah, that's why it always burns upward. Yeah,
17:30
Speaker 1: it tends to burn upward. No, it always does, always
17:33
Speaker 1: burns upward. And that's also why it's pointed too, because
17:37
Speaker 1: the air around it is dense and it's pushing it in. Right.
17:40
Speaker 1: Pretty awesome, But if you were to light a fire
17:43
Speaker 1: in zero gravity, it would burn as a sphere. I
17:47
Speaker 1: want to see this, I mean, can it be done
17:50
Speaker 1: if we go into zero gravity? Sure we have, but
17:53
Speaker 1: I mean they have zero gravity environments? Is do they
17:55
Speaker 1: a tech? Surely someone has started a fire in one
17:57
Speaker 1: of those just to see this. I think it's a
17:59
Speaker 1: really bad thing if a fire starts in a zero
18:02
Speaker 1: gravity environment. I guess. So that's I just gotta think
18:06
Speaker 1: that someone's tried this. I'm sure. I'm sure there's a
18:09
Speaker 1: video of it on YouTube. Now there's probably a good
18:11
Speaker 1: reason why. And someone's gonna write and say, huge dummies.
18:13
Speaker 1: Don't you understand that when you start a fire in
18:15
Speaker 1: zero gravity that we all die? That's right? Yeah? Okay,
18:43
Speaker 1: so steam, let's talk about steam, because because we talked
18:47
Speaker 1: about the recombination of atoms, when these gases are released,
18:50
Speaker 1: the same thing happens when you boil water. You know,
18:52
Speaker 1: you get this this gas mixing with oxygen in the air,
18:56
Speaker 1: but it's not going to combust, thank thankfully, or cooking
19:00
Speaker 1: would be much more dangerous. Um. It's because some of
19:04
Speaker 1: these atoms aren't as attracted to each other. In the
19:07
Speaker 1: case of water, for sure, they're tepid towards one another. Yeah.
19:11
Speaker 1: If you're talking fire, though, they have carbon and hydrogen,
19:14
Speaker 1: which are really attracted to oxygen, and so they like
19:17
Speaker 1: to get together and uh combine, recombine more easily, right,
19:21
Speaker 1: pretty simple. Uh. And then we've been talking mostly about
19:24
Speaker 1: wood as a fuel, but tons of things are are fuel.
19:28
Speaker 1: Gasoline is a good fuel. Gasoline doesn't produce char. Basically,
19:32
Speaker 1: heat vaporizes gasoline into nothing but volatile gases which burn. Yeah,
19:38
Speaker 1: that's so, there you go. And I always heard too
19:40
Speaker 1: that gasoline ignites like the vapor ignites, not the liquid.
19:45
Speaker 1: Is that true? Yeah, okay, yeah, it's not the it's
19:48
Speaker 1: not the liquid, it's the gas. But heat causes all
19:51
Speaker 1: that liquid to turn into the gas. Which, um, So
19:56
Speaker 1: different fuels are going to catch at different temperature, and
20:01
Speaker 1: no matter what the fuel, it'll have a piloted ignition
20:06
Speaker 1: temperature and an unpiloted ignition temperature. Basically, the piloted ignition
20:11
Speaker 1: temperature is that um that point that temperature where the
20:17
Speaker 1: volatile gases are being released and they're heated up to
20:21
Speaker 1: the point where if you introduce a spark, it would
20:24
Speaker 1: blow up. That's right. One of the defining characteristics of
20:28
Speaker 1: a volatile gas is that um it basically disperses at
20:32
Speaker 1: room temperature, I believe, right, Um, So at some point
20:38
Speaker 1: introducing a spark is gonna set that off at some temperature,
20:42
Speaker 1: which I guess means that like if you have gasoline
20:44
Speaker 1: cooled to enough of a temperature, just lighting a match
20:47
Speaker 1: next to it won't set off the gas. I don't
20:51
Speaker 1: know if this is a question we should be raising
20:54
Speaker 1: a general audience. Don't try this. I'm curious, so we'll
20:58
Speaker 1: have to check that out. But the piloted ignition temperature
21:01
Speaker 1: is basically when something gets hit by lightning and the
21:03
Speaker 1: heat is so intense that there's no need for a spark.
21:07
Speaker 1: It just heats it up the point where now it's
21:08
Speaker 1: on fire, where it come bust. Pretty cool. And I
21:12
Speaker 1: try to get to the origin of pilot like a
21:14
Speaker 1: pilot light, which is the same thing, I guess, and
21:17
Speaker 1: I couldn't find it. I don't know where that came from, because, yeah,
21:20
Speaker 1: I think about it, You've got the gas burning and
21:22
Speaker 1: the it's glowing, yeah, and then you just hit the
21:25
Speaker 1: spark and then bam, you just ignited the gas. So
21:28
Speaker 1: it's at the pilot, the piloted ignition temperature, and your
21:31
Speaker 1: hot water heater. But I'm sure someone knows the answer
21:34
Speaker 1: to that, so if you do send it in. We're
21:36
Speaker 1: raising a lot of questions in this one and giving
21:39
Speaker 1: some answers. Um the shape, and by shape usually they
21:44
Speaker 1: mean like surface area of a of a fuel effects
21:49
Speaker 1: how efficiently it burns and how easily it burns too. Yeah,
21:53
Speaker 1: I mean this is pretty basic. Like if you have
21:55
Speaker 1: a big thick log, obviously you're going to have way
21:58
Speaker 1: less surface area exposed and combustible then if you had
22:02
Speaker 1: like a toothpick. Yeah, and it can absorb a lot
22:04
Speaker 1: more heat too, big thick log um. But yeah, if
22:07
Speaker 1: you have a bunch of little pieces of wood, it's
22:09
Speaker 1: gonna burn more quickly, catch more easily because there's more
22:13
Speaker 1: exposed surface surface temperature and more of that fuels is
22:17
Speaker 1: exposed to the heat than a big, like you said,
22:20
Speaker 1: a big log or something. Yeah, and that's why when
22:22
Speaker 1: you're starting you know, if you ever watched a bear
22:24
Speaker 1: grills do this thing or less stroud, they try to
22:27
Speaker 1: get the little like tiny little shavings from the inside
22:30
Speaker 1: of h like you peel away the bark on a
22:33
Speaker 1: tree and then get the shavings off of the tree itself.
22:36
Speaker 1: And that's the stuff that's gonna like really combust easily
22:38
Speaker 1: through friction with like, uh, you know, there's different ways
22:42
Speaker 1: of doing the little I've never been I've never done that.
22:45
Speaker 1: Have you have you started a fire using like friction?
22:48
Speaker 1: Have you really, that's impressive. I do that stuff when
22:50
Speaker 1: I go camping now for fun, like in front of
22:54
Speaker 1: the real fire. You know that we started with our
22:56
Speaker 1: big lighters, and I'm sitting there with my beer and
22:59
Speaker 1: my Southern comfort in my comfy chair and the steak
23:03
Speaker 1: is on the grill. I'll do some little survival stuff
23:06
Speaker 1: just kind of for fun. You know. That's cool until
23:09
Speaker 1: I get tired of it and give up. Yeah, but yeah,
23:12
Speaker 1: it's fun. Um, Well, hats off to you for knowing
23:16
Speaker 1: how to do that. Well, it's pretty easy. I mean
23:18
Speaker 1: there's different ways. There's the plow method or the little
23:20
Speaker 1: bow uh where you make the little string to bow. Yeah,
23:23
Speaker 1: and do that little number. Yeah, I've seen that one. Yeah,
23:26
Speaker 1: there's the castaway one. Yeah, that's the plow method. Oh
23:30
Speaker 1: that's plow. Yeah, that makes sense. They'd be called that
23:33
Speaker 1: you anything else, I don't think. So do you do
23:37
Speaker 1: you do you feel like we explain this correctly? And well? Yeah,
23:39
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's pretty basic chemistry. We're basically heat
23:43
Speaker 1: breaks down a fuel so that it can combine with
23:47
Speaker 1: oxygen and ignite, yeah, and then burned. That's right, And
23:52
Speaker 1: it's self sustaining so long as there's fuel and oxygen,
23:54
Speaker 1: and then all you need is a bear skin rug
23:56
Speaker 1: and some cinemax and you're all set for Friday night. Awesome.
24:00
Speaker 1: Gets Uh. If you want to know more about fire,
24:03
Speaker 1: you can type fire into the search bar at how
24:05
Speaker 1: stuffworks dot com and that will bring up this article
24:08
Speaker 1: and plenty of other stuff too. Um, maybe even some
24:11
Speaker 1: survival stuff by one Charles W. Bryant. Uh. And I
24:15
Speaker 1: said search bar. So it's time for a listener mail.
24:20
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this email a bad to the bone
24:23
Speaker 1: so uh. Joscelyn Stone here in Victoria, BC, Canada, apparently
24:30
Speaker 1: hates bad to the Bone just as much as I do.
24:33
Speaker 1: So we are We're friends in that way, uh, she says.
24:37
Speaker 1: A few years ago, my partner Tim discovered that he
24:40
Speaker 1: could set anything on his heart desired on his alarm
24:43
Speaker 1: clock for his cell phone. He searched for the perfect
24:46
Speaker 1: song and decided on Bad to the Bone. Tim believed,
24:49
Speaker 1: in order to slowly get himself ready for the day,
24:50
Speaker 1: he needed alarms at five am, five thirty and six.
24:54
Speaker 1: I hate that stuff. I, on the other hand, wake
24:57
Speaker 1: up without an alarm at six thirty without fail. What
25:00
Speaker 1: I do? All right? Um? Every morning I was shocked
25:02
Speaker 1: by the full volume darn and or an air, I
25:06
Speaker 1: would the way to wake up right there. I would
25:10
Speaker 1: blast up to a sitting position in bed, my heart
25:12
Speaker 1: exploding out of my chest, and look next to me
25:14
Speaker 1: at Tim, who was sleeping through the whole event. I
25:16
Speaker 1: would punch him, get up and turn off the alarm myself,
25:19
Speaker 1: and then repeat this two more times. What kind of
25:22
Speaker 1: business partners are these? I don't think their business partners.
25:25
Speaker 1: That was like an American beauty remember that? Oh yeah,
25:28
Speaker 1: it's like I'd like you to meet my partner. He's like, oh,
25:30
Speaker 1: what line of work you guys? That was a quantum
25:34
Speaker 1: bleap meeting load star. Huh wow, yeah, look at you. Um.
25:40
Speaker 1: For some reason, no matter how much I begged him,
25:41
Speaker 1: he wouldn't change the song or let me turn down
25:44
Speaker 1: the volume. If I secretly change it before bed, he
25:46
Speaker 1: would change it back. But I tried to turn it
25:48
Speaker 1: off and hide his phone, he would find it and
25:49
Speaker 1: turn it back again. If I turned the volume down
25:52
Speaker 1: while he was sleeping, his spidy sense would start tingling
25:55
Speaker 1: and he'd wake up and turn it back on. It
25:57
Speaker 1: turned into a game that lasted a full year, finally
26:00
Speaker 1: ending when I told him the slipper of amusement I
26:02
Speaker 1: found in the game was gone, and I would throw
26:04
Speaker 1: his phone into the ocean if he didn't change it.
26:06
Speaker 1: So eventually she just had enough. It's like, this isn't
26:09
Speaker 1: fun anymore. We ended up buying an alarm clock radio,
26:12
Speaker 1: which he also sleeps through. Now, thanks to Tim, every
26:15
Speaker 1: time you hear bad at the Bone in public, I
26:17
Speaker 1: immediately leave the area lest I explode in a muddy,
26:20
Speaker 1: scalding rock going rage like the wamanoo guys or wow,
26:26
Speaker 1: nice reference. Yeah, so, and then she said, ps do
26:30
Speaker 1: a podcast on accordions after all that? Jeez, who's that? Jocelyne,
26:36
Speaker 1: thank you, Joscelyn from Victoria Busi Cannon, thank you, and Tim, Tim,
26:41
Speaker 1: good luck. Tim and Joscelyn helped you guys find a
26:44
Speaker 1: yes song you could both agree on. Agreed, and Tim
26:46
Speaker 1: just get up, dude? Is it some for some people?
26:49
Speaker 1: It's hard. I never understood the snooze because wouldn't you
26:54
Speaker 1: rather to sleep that time? No, I'm with you, but
26:57
Speaker 1: I'm saying, like, instead of being woken up every ten minute,
26:59
Speaker 1: not that easy to just wake right up, right eyed
27:03
Speaker 1: and bushy tail, and to accept others as they are. Uh,
27:07
Speaker 1: let's see what do we what do we want? Um? Geez,
27:12
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know either. We'll have to
27:14
Speaker 1: figure it out. Yeah, um yeah, send us anything. I
27:19
Speaker 1: guess this is. It's a generic call out. You can
27:22
Speaker 1: send us anything via Twitter at s y s K podcast.
27:27
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
27:29
Speaker 1: you Should Know and send us an email containing anything.
27:32
Speaker 1: And if you send us an email it just says
27:34
Speaker 1: anything like, you'll be one of five thousand people that
27:37
Speaker 1: do that, so just stop. Um. You can send that
27:41
Speaker 1: email that doesn't just say anything to stuff podcast at
27:45
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
27:50
Speaker 1: a production of iHeart Radios. How Stuff Works for more
27:53
Speaker 1: podcasts for my Heart Radio is at the iHeart Radio app,
27:55
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows