tags: Light My Fire, physics, fire, weird, streaming video
Here's a short video showing a fun trick you can play with fire -- in your own home. It also is a graphic illustration as to why fires are so difficult to extinguish.
More like this
The funeral services are beginning this week for the 10 volunteer firefighters and the five other individuals who were fatally injured by the horrific explosion at West Fertilizer. The
yesterday, as we were headed into an informal research group discussion,
one of the locals grabbed me and pointed out the window at a small plume of smoke on the mountain above Santa Barbara
I'm not sure about the NUMBER of fires. That might be hard to count. If five small fires emerge and are put out, there are five fires. If five fires emerge, join into one configuration, and wipe out a handful of mountain villages in the Rockies, that's one fire.
âAs fire fighters, we know the risks of answering the call, but it does not lessen our pain when the worst happens,â said Harold Schaitberger, general president of the Int'l Association of Fire Fighters.
I have done a lot of fire tricks for science shows in the past month, but this blows me away. 'Tis most fantastic, and I will try it on the morrow.
Although reasonable fire safety measures should be taken: if you are not sure you can safely pull off this trick, you should undertake your premier attempt in somebody else's home. Safety first, and all that.
I thought this was common knowledge, but I guess it's been forgotten for a while. I first saw this around 1960, when everybody was showing it to everyone else. Our physics teacher demonstrated this in class in 1964, by which time it was old hat, something even little kids knew.
I suspect it had been shown on some science show on TV, because when I left home, everybody my age already knew the trick. (You know TV, right? The forerunner of YouTube?)
I remember doing this with matches, passing the flame back and forth, but not from quite so far away.