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How Fire Works · Stuff You Should Know

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