May 16, 2020 • 28 mins
Creating fire was possibly the most important human discovery, but it's easy to take for granted. But. Josh and Chuck get to the bottom of the chemistry of fire in their quest to explain everything in the universe, in this classic episode.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, folks. From October four, two thousand twelve. My Saturday
select pick is how fire works. Yeah, you can light
a match, Sure, you can use a magnifying glass, and
you might be able to rub two sticks together or
use a flint in stone. But that is all just
starting a fire. How fire actually works is much more
(00:21):
complicated and very very cool. So give it a listen.
Why don't you welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a
production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me. It's
always as Charles w. Chuckle Bryant said, and uh, this
(00:45):
is stuff you should know, Josh. We let me stand
next to your fire. Sure, okay, come come over here
right now? Okay, sorry, Well it's nice and warm over here,
isn't it. I'm feverish. It's smoky, and I feel like
there's chemical reactions taking place before my very eyes. There are.
That's why there's fire. If fire is nothing if not
(01:08):
a chemical reaction. Yeah, I got so. Okay. Have you
heard of the Wine Cooff Hotel? Yeah? But born and
raised here? Ye? Uh, the Allis Hotel? Was that the
hotel fire? Yeah? Yeah, you know that it's now the
Ellis Hotel. It's at the corner of Peach Tree and Ellis.
(01:29):
Nice referbish hotel. Back in it was called the Wine
Coff Hotel and it was the site of the most
disastrous casualty wise hotel fire in US history. In December
nineteen people died right right here in Atlanta, very said
forty four. Just under forty four years later, in Las Vegas, Nevada,
(01:52):
the MGM Grand had a hotel fire. People died. Do
you remember the MGM fire GM Grand fire? It was
a big deal, not at all, you you. I'm surprised
because I kind of remember, like seeing footage of that.
When was this? Oh no, I don't remember. So both
of these fires and all the loss of life associated
with them were the direct result of hubris towards fire.
(02:16):
The Wine Cough their fire exits one stairwell for the
whole building. I think it was like nineteen stories or
something like that. Um, the MGM Grand, they they didn't
put up like sixty dollars for a fire detection system
in this one part of the hotel that would have
saved everyone's lives. A part hubrist, part of financial shenanigans, right,
(02:39):
But isn't that kind of based on Hubris. My point
is is that if there's one thing that we shouldn't
have hubris towards its fire. Agreed. Do you think we
might control fire thanks to Prometheus being given it by
the gods? Yep? But fire controls us when it really
comes down to it. That's right. You gotta face off
(02:59):
a tete a tete fire. You're gonna lose, buddy, because
you're combustible. Yeah. And so also we should say here
that this fire as um it should be a prequel
to the how wildfires work and how um spontantaneous human
combustion works. Those two episodes were great. Agreed, This will
seal up our triumvirate, and now we're going to explain
(03:21):
how fire works. Yeah. I do have a couple of
quick stats. We're talking about the deadly nature of fire
does kill more people than any other force of nature.
I couldn't find that any source for that, but I
still I was searching for it, and it brought up
like a handful of plagiarized versions of this article on
the internet. Really. Yeah, those are always fun, especially when
(03:42):
it's your own. This one is not mine. This is
a bill Hart, Tom Harris, Tom Harris. UM, But I
do have some stats in the US, at least in
two thousand ten for residential building fires, over people died
that year, And that's sort of in the wheelhouse. It
fluctuates between uh about thirty hundred a year from building fires. Uh.
(04:04):
Cooking is far and away the leading cause of a
building fire, and arson is number two. Huh, which I
would have thought, like falling asleep with a cigarette would
would be above arson. UM and then total in two
thousand nine, and I guess this counts like any kind
of fire in the US, they were close to thirty
(04:25):
deaths that year, so that you know, that's a lot. Yeah,
I mean that's more than um, I'm sure killed by
volcanoes in the US every year. I think you're right,
you know, yes, that's just one or two people falling
into kill awea from getting too close. Have you seen
that footage of that scientists going, Um, he's collecting some
(04:45):
sort of I guess magma from an active volcano in Hawaii,
and um, it was really nerve racking because he goes up,
takes the sample. He's climbing up the rim and then
climbs back down and right when he steps away from it,
the magma come up over the rim exactly where he'd
just been climbing like five minutes before, and so it
would have like just just completely disintegrated him. I imagine
(05:09):
what did he say. I don't know, like, holy crap,
did you just see that? Well, the guy who was
filming it was like narrating like this is so stupid. Yeah,
it's very cool. I don't know what you'd search, but
it's up there on the internet somewhere search wa pony
wou and that should do it, so Chuck. The Greeks
thought that fire was one of the four elements earth wire, water,
(05:32):
wind and fire. Earth wind and fire and water and
nash and young silly Greeks. Uh. The reason why that
doesn't really hold up is because um, earth, fire, air,
these are elements. They're matter, Yeah, they're made up of atoms.
Fire is the physical manifestation of matter changing form. It's
(05:59):
pretty cool, like when you think of it that way.
We're going to describe how this happens. Alright, I can
tackle some of this. Chemistry is not my forte but
it is a chemical reaction at its core between oxygen
and um fuel, which I mean, we'll probably let's talk
about like a camp fire. Let's go with wood. Wood
(06:20):
fire is probably the easiest way to describe it. But
the wood is the fuel. The wood is the fuel.
Oxygen is found in the air, that's right. But for
these things to uh make fire, you gotta have something
called combustion, yeah, and which means you're gonna have have
some sort of a spark. Um. Well, actually not always,
because as we find out, some things can combust without
(06:40):
a spark. I think if they get hot enough, like
the heat is just so intense that it doesn't need
any spark, right, Yeah, But for wood, you have to
get it up to um. Uh it's ignition temperature, which
is about three d degrees fahrenheit fifty degrees cel, which
is where you're gonna start seeing some smoke because that
(07:01):
is cellulose burning away. Uh. And it just occurred to
me reading this today, like where there's smoke, there's fire.
Not true, yeah, because things can smoke without there being
a fire. Yeah. Actually a byproduct of fire. You know,
um doesn't smoke, so I guess in order to if
you're one of the people that now says the bottom
(07:21):
of the totem pole or instead of top of the
totem pole. Then we can further reinforce this obnoxious quality
by encouraging you to say, where there's smoke, there is ignition,
temperature of a combustible fuel, there's volatile gases. It's nice
way to go chucked. All right, thanks? So, yeah, heat
is heat decomposes fuel where wills to say would and
(07:45):
in the case of would, specifically, it decomposes the um
volatile gases contained in the solid matter. Right, So these
volatile gases start to heat up themselves, and while they're
doing that, the cellulose, the solid stuff is decomposing in
turning into what's called char. Yeah, I got a little
thing on cell cellulostional Q and then you can just
(08:06):
take a home, no man, because that's where I get confused.
I'm confused to cellulose about of what is cellulose, And
that's what like, that's where you make paper, that's what
you make paper from. That's what you make cellulosic ethanol from, too,
and it's what you make cellophane out of. Cellophane is
regenerated cellulose. So it's it's like it looks like plastic,
(08:30):
but it's not. I had no idea. It is a
man made as I'm sorry, it's a natural polymer. Plastic
is manmade obviously, So cellophane is nothing more than regenerated
paper in a way. Wow, like they had some other
stuff to it. But that's why it's biodegradable. And I
always wonder why. I like, supposedly cellophane is biodegradable. It's like,
(08:51):
that's impossible. It's plastic, but it's not plastic. There's this
old cellophane and from like the fifties maybe, and it's
like good things coming twos and it's like these this
pair of twins wrapped in cellophane, Oh my god, and
they're just like kind of looking around. But yeah, you
can imagine they only have them in there for a
few seconds before they snapped the picture. For I did
(09:13):
not know that about cellophane. Back to the podcast right there,
and I don't know about that. Hats off to you
all right back to you know, I know what the
fact of the podcast is. You're gonna save it for
when it comes. We gotta save it. Okay. So, um,
(09:50):
you've got the cellulose, the solid matter of wood separating
now from the volatile um gases that are starting to
lift off. That's smoke, right, yes, Okay, the wood, the
solid matter starting to turn into char um. And that
is basically if you if you burn would if you
(10:11):
heat it up and you separate the gases, which are
the smoke, what remains is carbon and what what charcoal
is is charred wood that's had the volatile gases burned
out of it, which is why when you have a
charcoal fire, you don't have smoke, yeah, or not much
at least, yeah, because the gases have already been burned off. Yeah,
(10:34):
and charcoal too. That got that kind of got me
on charcoal filtering because these charcoal is a filter and
I think these it is a scrubber two on smoke stacks.
And uh, if you're like I did some of those
survival articles at one point, and one of the things
you can do to purify water is take your char
from your fire, put it in like you know, cool
(10:55):
it down obviously and then put it in. Then put
it in like a hanky and in running creek water
through that to collect it underneath. That's awesome. And uh,
and there's like real charcoal filters too. But apparently charcoal
has a quality because once it's pure carbon like that,
it um has a knack for filtering out things like
(11:17):
impurities like chlorine and letting other stuff get through. So
that's why it's used as a filter. Yeah, because essentially
what you're making is a carbon filter. Yeah. Charcoal is
like basically pure carbon with all the impurities burned off. Yeah,
those impurities burned off as smoke. They're volatile gases, So
it's pretty neat. Yeah, that's pretty awesome, little survival tip man,
(11:37):
you're killing it today? Well now that this is when
I go to sleep though. Okay, So, um, the third
component of burned wood, You've got the volatile gases smoke,
you have the char the charcoal, which is carbon, and
then you have ash, which is unburnable minerals like um,
calcium or phosphorus, I believe. Yeah, And if you like
(11:58):
you ever cooked with brick ets, charcoal, briqutts, you're gonna
get a lot more ash with that because it has
a lot of more like byproducts in it. Then if
you use like real wood charcoal, right, but they're not
gonna smoke, They're just not gonna burn. It's just gonna
be left over. Like you can't get rid of it.
You can pounded into oblivion, but it's still there. Yeah.
But if you use the real wood coal then a char,
then you'll notice you don't get a lot of that stuff.
(12:19):
Oh is that right? Yeah? Okay, but the cats aren't
as nasty a synthetic Brits. No, they're made from char
and like binding agents and stuff like that. And saw that. No.
I actually used to hear that, like, oh, you can't
cook with briquettes are so nasty. But they're really I
looked into it. It's not super nasty. I mean you
probably should cook with siwihere in between nasty and super nasty. Yeah,
(12:41):
well it's not. It's not as bad as I thought.
I thought it was like a bunch of chemical agents
and glue and cement, and that's not the case. I
got to It's not the hot dogs of cooking materials.
That's the corn dog. Okay, um okay, So we've got
the components right, yeah. Um. As these volatile um gases
(13:03):
continue to heat up um too about five degrees fahrenheit
two six degrees celsius, they the molecules break apart, and
when they break apart, they go to combine with oxygen
oxidation right um. And the same thing happens with the
(13:23):
carbon in the wood, but this takes pace in place
much more slowly. But one of the the stars of
this chemical reaction, this change of breaking down to these
molecules and then the recombining into other things like carbon dioxide,
carbon monoxide. Water. Isn't that weird that fire produces water? Um,
that's why sometimes you have steam coming from a fire,
(13:44):
right um. The star of all this chemical reactions, all
these chemical reactions is heat is produced. Heat, energy is released,
which allows us to cook and be comfortable and feel
secure and all the good stuff that comes with fire exactly.
And because of the heat that's released as these things
are heated up, Um, it is sustainable. That means a
(14:06):
fire is sustainable so long as there's fuel and there's
oxygen present. Yeah. That was the kind of creepy part,
or not creepy, but it's self perpetuating, like that flame
is gonna heat up any fuel near it to the
point where it can release those gases to recombine with oxygen.
It's pretty elegant if you think about it. Yeah. Another
(14:28):
big star of fire besides heat is light, and part
of that is from the same um the carbon atoms right, yeah,
that are combining, that are being torn apart. The molecules
that UM form up the char breaking down in their
constituent carbon atoms when they combine with oxygen, right recombine, Yeah,
(14:51):
I think that would make carbon monoxide. But as they
change um, they they're electrons will go up and erge
level will change orbit and when they come back down
they emit. They release some of that energy that they
have and they release it in the form of photons.
They produce light um and indescence, right, Yeah, it's it's
(15:14):
heat producing light. Like we talked about bioluminescence, where basically
heat up a filament in a light bulb and it glows.
That's the same thing with the fire. It's the same
based on the same principle, which is incandescence. Pretty awesome
and depending on the temperature, uh, different colored light is
going to be produced. Yeah, Like uh you remember the
(15:36):
bunsen burners back in chemistry class and how the buns
and burners have little slots on the side that you
can vary the amount of like oxygen getting in there.
You know, there's the little flickering orange flame of a
buns and burner. Then if you let a lot more
oxygen in, it's going to be more Uh, it's gonna
be more hot. And that's why that's when it's gonna
be that blue jet the same as when you see
(15:58):
like a jet plane, like right next to where the
flame comes out, it's gonna be like really blue, and
then it gets more orange and yellow, you know, like
the Batmobile. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. I know
exactly original bile No. Um, we've seen a bunch of
batmobiles recently. There's a documentary about the Batmobile. That's what
all those were there for a comic con. Okay, we
(16:19):
had a mum and I had our picture taken with
it with which one the new one, the tumbler, that's
what they called the new one, is it? Yeah? The
Chrystalin one is called the tongue. The chrystal one was.
It's awesome, It's pretty cool. Uh so yeah. The the
reason why the blue one happens to be a different
color and hotter is because there's more energy being released,
(16:41):
that's right. Uh. The lower energy and slightly less hot
part of the flame that glows orange yellow is at
the top and um, the reason the flame is pointed
this is this is pretty awesome, not the fact of
the podcast. The space part is okay, I think, all right,
go ahead. Then, So a flame is pointed and it
(17:02):
burns upward because the gases that are burning what you're
burning right there are volatile gases. They're being burned off
right um as they as they burn there, they're hotter,
but they're also less dance and they're moving upward towards
the less dense air above it, which causes it to
be pointed. But if you were to light you take
(17:25):
it for granted, but it's kind of cool to know
how that works. Yeah, that's why it always burns upward. Yeah,
it tends to burn upward. No, it always does, always
burns upward. And that's also why it's pointed too, because
the air around it is dense and it's pushing it in. Right.
Pretty awesome, But if you were to light a fire
in zero gravity, it would burn as a sphere. I
(17:47):
want to see this, I mean, can it be done
if we go into zero gravity? Sure we have, but
I mean they have zero gravity environments? Is do they
a tech? Surely someone has started a fire in one
of those just to see this. I think it's a
really bad thing if a fire starts in a zero
gravity environment. I guess. So that's I just gotta think
that someone's tried this. I'm sure. I'm sure there's a
(18:09):
video of it on YouTube. Now there's probably a good
reason why. And someone's gonna write and say, huge dummies.
Don't you understand that when you start a fire in
zero gravity that we all die? That's right? Yeah? Okay,
(18:43):
so steam, let's talk about steam, because because we talked
about the recombination of atoms, when these gases are released,
the same thing happens when you boil water. You know,
you get this this gas mixing with oxygen in the air,
but it's not going to combust, thank thankfully, or cooking
would be much more dangerous. Um. It's because some of
(19:04):
these atoms aren't as attracted to each other. In the
case of water, for sure, they're tepid towards one another. Yeah.
If you're talking fire, though, they have carbon and hydrogen,
which are really attracted to oxygen, and so they like
to get together and uh combine, recombine more easily, right,
pretty simple. Uh. And then we've been talking mostly about
(19:24):
wood as a fuel, but tons of things are are fuel.
Gasoline is a good fuel. Gasoline doesn't produce char. Basically,
heat vaporizes gasoline into nothing but volatile gases which burn. Yeah,
that's so, there you go. And I always heard too
that gasoline ignites like the vapor ignites, not the liquid.
(19:45):
Is that true? Yeah, okay, yeah, it's not the it's
not the liquid, it's the gas. But heat causes all
that liquid to turn into the gas. Which, um, So
different fuels are going to catch at different temperature, and
no matter what the fuel, it'll have a piloted ignition
(20:06):
temperature and an unpiloted ignition temperature. Basically, the piloted ignition
temperature is that um that point that temperature where the
volatile gases are being released and they're heated up to
the point where if you introduce a spark, it would
blow up. That's right. One of the defining characteristics of
(20:28):
a volatile gas is that um it basically disperses at
room temperature, I believe, right, Um, So at some point
introducing a spark is gonna set that off at some temperature,
which I guess means that like if you have gasoline
cooled to enough of a temperature, just lighting a match
next to it won't set off the gas. I don't
(20:51):
know if this is a question we should be raising
a general audience. Don't try this. I'm curious, so we'll
have to check that out. But the piloted ignition temperature
is basically when something gets hit by lightning and the
heat is so intense that there's no need for a spark.
It just heats it up the point where now it's
on fire, where it come bust. Pretty cool. And I
(21:12):
try to get to the origin of pilot like a
pilot light, which is the same thing, I guess, and
I couldn't find it. I don't know where that came from, because, yeah,
I think about it, You've got the gas burning and
the it's glowing, yeah, and then you just hit the
spark and then bam, you just ignited the gas. So
it's at the pilot, the piloted ignition temperature, and your
hot water heater. But I'm sure someone knows the answer
(21:34):
to that, so if you do send it in. We're
raising a lot of questions in this one and giving
some answers. Um the shape, and by shape usually they
mean like surface area of a of a fuel effects
how efficiently it burns and how easily it burns too. Yeah,
I mean this is pretty basic. Like if you have
(21:55):
a big thick log, obviously you're going to have way
less surface area exposed and combustible then if you had
like a toothpick. Yeah, and it can absorb a lot
more heat too, big thick log um. But yeah, if
you have a bunch of little pieces of wood, it's
gonna burn more quickly, catch more easily because there's more
exposed surface surface temperature and more of that fuels is
(22:17):
exposed to the heat than a big, like you said,
a big log or something. Yeah, and that's why when
you're starting you know, if you ever watched a bear
grills do this thing or less stroud, they try to
get the little like tiny little shavings from the inside
of h like you peel away the bark on a
tree and then get the shavings off of the tree itself.
And that's the stuff that's gonna like really combust easily
(22:38):
through friction with like, uh, you know, there's different ways
of doing the little I've never been I've never done that.
Have you have you started a fire using like friction?
Have you really, that's impressive. I do that stuff when
I go camping now for fun, like in front of
the real fire. You know that we started with our
big lighters, and I'm sitting there with my beer and
(22:59):
my Southern comfort in my comfy chair and the steak
is on the grill. I'll do some little survival stuff
just kind of for fun. You know. That's cool until
I get tired of it and give up. Yeah, but yeah,
it's fun. Um, Well, hats off to you for knowing
how to do that. Well, it's pretty easy. I mean
there's different ways. There's the plow method or the little
(23:20):
bow uh where you make the little string to bow. Yeah,
and do that little number. Yeah, I've seen that one. Yeah,
there's the castaway one. Yeah, that's the plow method. Oh
that's plow. Yeah, that makes sense. They'd be called that
you anything else, I don't think. So do you do
you do you feel like we explain this correctly? And well? Yeah,
I mean it's it's pretty basic chemistry. We're basically heat
(23:43):
breaks down a fuel so that it can combine with
oxygen and ignite, yeah, and then burned. That's right, And
it's self sustaining so long as there's fuel and oxygen,
and then all you need is a bear skin rug
and some cinemax and you're all set for Friday night. Awesome.
Gets Uh. If you want to know more about fire,
you can type fire into the search bar at how
(24:05):
stuffworks dot com and that will bring up this article
and plenty of other stuff too. Um, maybe even some
survival stuff by one Charles W. Bryant. Uh. And I
said search bar. So it's time for a listener mail.
I'm gonna call this email a bad to the bone
so uh. Joscelyn Stone here in Victoria, BC, Canada, apparently
(24:30):
hates bad to the Bone just as much as I do.
So we are We're friends in that way, uh, she says.
A few years ago, my partner Tim discovered that he
could set anything on his heart desired on his alarm
clock for his cell phone. He searched for the perfect
song and decided on Bad to the Bone. Tim believed,
in order to slowly get himself ready for the day,
(24:50):
he needed alarms at five am, five thirty and six.
I hate that stuff. I, on the other hand, wake
up without an alarm at six thirty without fail. What
I do? All right? Um? Every morning I was shocked
by the full volume darn and or an air, I
would the way to wake up right there. I would
blast up to a sitting position in bed, my heart
(25:12):
exploding out of my chest, and look next to me
at Tim, who was sleeping through the whole event. I
would punch him, get up and turn off the alarm myself,
and then repeat this two more times. What kind of
business partners are these? I don't think their business partners.
That was like an American beauty remember that? Oh yeah,
it's like I'd like you to meet my partner. He's like, oh,
what line of work you guys? That was a quantum
(25:34):
bleap meeting load star. Huh wow, yeah, look at you. Um.
For some reason, no matter how much I begged him,
he wouldn't change the song or let me turn down
the volume. If I secretly change it before bed, he
would change it back. But I tried to turn it
off and hide his phone, he would find it and
turn it back again. If I turned the volume down
while he was sleeping, his spidy sense would start tingling
(25:55):
and he'd wake up and turn it back on. It
turned into a game that lasted a full year, finally
ending when I told him the slipper of amusement I
found in the game was gone, and I would throw
his phone into the ocean if he didn't change it.
So eventually she just had enough. It's like, this isn't
fun anymore. We ended up buying an alarm clock radio,
which he also sleeps through. Now, thanks to Tim, every
time you hear bad at the Bone in public, I
(26:17):
immediately leave the area lest I explode in a muddy,
scalding rock going rage like the wamanoo guys or wow,
nice reference. Yeah, so, and then she said, ps do
a podcast on accordions after all that? Jeez, who's that? Jocelyne,
thank you, Joscelyn from Victoria Busi Cannon, thank you, and Tim, Tim,
(26:41):
good luck. Tim and Joscelyn helped you guys find a
yes song you could both agree on. Agreed, and Tim
just get up, dude? Is it some for some people?
It's hard. I never understood the snooze because wouldn't you
rather to sleep that time? No, I'm with you, but
I'm saying, like, instead of being woken up every ten minute,
not that easy to just wake right up, right eyed
(27:03):
and bushy tail, and to accept others as they are. Uh,
let's see what do we what do we want? Um? Geez,
I don't know. I don't know either. We'll have to
figure it out. Yeah, um yeah, send us anything. I
guess this is. It's a generic call out. You can
send us anything via Twitter at s y s K podcast.
(27:27):
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
you Should Know and send us an email containing anything.
And if you send us an email it just says
anything like, you'll be one of five thousand people that
do that, so just stop. Um. You can send that
email that doesn't just say anything to stuff podcast at
how stuff Works dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
(27:50):
a production of iHeart Radios. How Stuff Works for more
podcasts for my Heart Radio is at the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
Hi, folks. From October four, two thousand twelve. My Saturday
select pick is how fire works. Yeah, you can light
a match, Sure, you can use a magnifying glass, and
you might be able to rub two sticks together or
use a flint in stone. But that is all just
starting a fire. How fire actually works is much more
(00:21):
complicated and very very cool. So give it a listen.
Why don't you welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a
production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and
welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me. It's
always as Charles w. Chuckle Bryant said, and uh, this
(00:45):
is stuff you should know, Josh. We let me stand
next to your fire. Sure, okay, come come over here
right now? Okay, sorry, Well it's nice and warm over here,
isn't it. I'm feverish. It's smoky, and I feel like
there's chemical reactions taking place before my very eyes. There are.
That's why there's fire. If fire is nothing if not
(01:08):
a chemical reaction. Yeah, I got so. Okay. Have you
heard of the Wine Cooff Hotel? Yeah? But born and
raised here? Ye? Uh, the Allis Hotel? Was that the
hotel fire? Yeah? Yeah, you know that it's now the
Ellis Hotel. It's at the corner of Peach Tree and Ellis.
(01:29):
Nice referbish hotel. Back in it was called the Wine
Coff Hotel and it was the site of the most
disastrous casualty wise hotel fire in US history. In December
nineteen people died right right here in Atlanta, very said
forty four. Just under forty four years later, in Las Vegas, Nevada,
(01:52):
the MGM Grand had a hotel fire. People died. Do
you remember the MGM fire GM Grand fire? It was
a big deal, not at all, you you. I'm surprised
because I kind of remember, like seeing footage of that.
When was this? Oh no, I don't remember. So both
of these fires and all the loss of life associated
with them were the direct result of hubris towards fire.
(02:16):
The Wine Cough their fire exits one stairwell for the
whole building. I think it was like nineteen stories or
something like that. Um, the MGM Grand, they they didn't
put up like sixty dollars for a fire detection system
in this one part of the hotel that would have
saved everyone's lives. A part hubrist, part of financial shenanigans, right,
(02:39):
But isn't that kind of based on Hubris. My point
is is that if there's one thing that we shouldn't
have hubris towards its fire. Agreed. Do you think we
might control fire thanks to Prometheus being given it by
the gods? Yep? But fire controls us when it really
comes down to it. That's right. You gotta face off
(02:59):
a tete a tete fire. You're gonna lose, buddy, because
you're combustible. Yeah. And so also we should say here
that this fire as um it should be a prequel
to the how wildfires work and how um spontantaneous human
combustion works. Those two episodes were great. Agreed, This will
seal up our triumvirate, and now we're going to explain
(03:21):
how fire works. Yeah. I do have a couple of
quick stats. We're talking about the deadly nature of fire
does kill more people than any other force of nature.
I couldn't find that any source for that, but I
still I was searching for it, and it brought up
like a handful of plagiarized versions of this article on
the internet. Really. Yeah, those are always fun, especially when
(03:42):
it's your own. This one is not mine. This is
a bill Hart, Tom Harris, Tom Harris. UM, But I
do have some stats in the US, at least in
two thousand ten for residential building fires, over people died
that year, And that's sort of in the wheelhouse. It
fluctuates between uh about thirty hundred a year from building fires. Uh.
(04:04):
Cooking is far and away the leading cause of a
building fire, and arson is number two. Huh, which I
would have thought, like falling asleep with a cigarette would
would be above arson. UM and then total in two
thousand nine, and I guess this counts like any kind
of fire in the US, they were close to thirty
(04:25):
deaths that year, so that you know, that's a lot. Yeah,
I mean that's more than um, I'm sure killed by
volcanoes in the US every year. I think you're right,
you know, yes, that's just one or two people falling
into kill awea from getting too close. Have you seen
that footage of that scientists going, Um, he's collecting some
(04:45):
sort of I guess magma from an active volcano in Hawaii,
and um, it was really nerve racking because he goes up,
takes the sample. He's climbing up the rim and then
climbs back down and right when he steps away from it,
the magma come up over the rim exactly where he'd
just been climbing like five minutes before, and so it
would have like just just completely disintegrated him. I imagine
(05:09):
what did he say. I don't know, like, holy crap,
did you just see that? Well, the guy who was
filming it was like narrating like this is so stupid. Yeah,
it's very cool. I don't know what you'd search, but
it's up there on the internet somewhere search wa pony
wou and that should do it, so Chuck. The Greeks
thought that fire was one of the four elements earth wire, water,
(05:32):
wind and fire. Earth wind and fire and water and
nash and young silly Greeks. Uh. The reason why that
doesn't really hold up is because um, earth, fire, air,
these are elements. They're matter, Yeah, they're made up of atoms.
Fire is the physical manifestation of matter changing form. It's
(05:59):
pretty cool, like when you think of it that way.
We're going to describe how this happens. Alright, I can
tackle some of this. Chemistry is not my forte but
it is a chemical reaction at its core between oxygen
and um fuel, which I mean, we'll probably let's talk
about like a camp fire. Let's go with wood. Wood
(06:20):
fire is probably the easiest way to describe it. But
the wood is the fuel. The wood is the fuel.
Oxygen is found in the air, that's right. But for
these things to uh make fire, you gotta have something
called combustion, yeah, and which means you're gonna have have
some sort of a spark. Um. Well, actually not always,
because as we find out, some things can combust without
(06:40):
a spark. I think if they get hot enough, like
the heat is just so intense that it doesn't need
any spark, right, Yeah, But for wood, you have to
get it up to um. Uh it's ignition temperature, which
is about three d degrees fahrenheit fifty degrees cel, which
is where you're gonna start seeing some smoke because that
(07:01):
is cellulose burning away. Uh. And it just occurred to
me reading this today, like where there's smoke, there's fire.
Not true, yeah, because things can smoke without there being
a fire. Yeah. Actually a byproduct of fire. You know,
um doesn't smoke, so I guess in order to if
you're one of the people that now says the bottom
(07:21):
of the totem pole or instead of top of the
totem pole. Then we can further reinforce this obnoxious quality
by encouraging you to say, where there's smoke, there is ignition,
temperature of a combustible fuel, there's volatile gases. It's nice
way to go chucked. All right, thanks? So, yeah, heat
is heat decomposes fuel where wills to say would and
(07:45):
in the case of would, specifically, it decomposes the um
volatile gases contained in the solid matter. Right, So these
volatile gases start to heat up themselves, and while they're
doing that, the cellulose, the solid stuff is decomposing in
turning into what's called char. Yeah, I got a little
thing on cell cellulostional Q and then you can just
(08:06):
take a home, no man, because that's where I get confused.
I'm confused to cellulose about of what is cellulose, And
that's what like, that's where you make paper, that's what
you make paper from. That's what you make cellulosic ethanol from, too,
and it's what you make cellophane out of. Cellophane is
regenerated cellulose. So it's it's like it looks like plastic,
(08:30):
but it's not. I had no idea. It is a
man made as I'm sorry, it's a natural polymer. Plastic
is manmade obviously, So cellophane is nothing more than regenerated
paper in a way. Wow, like they had some other
stuff to it. But that's why it's biodegradable. And I
always wonder why. I like, supposedly cellophane is biodegradable. It's like,
(08:51):
that's impossible. It's plastic, but it's not plastic. There's this
old cellophane and from like the fifties maybe, and it's
like good things coming twos and it's like these this
pair of twins wrapped in cellophane, Oh my god, and
they're just like kind of looking around. But yeah, you
can imagine they only have them in there for a
few seconds before they snapped the picture. For I did
(09:13):
not know that about cellophane. Back to the podcast right there,
and I don't know about that. Hats off to you
all right back to you know, I know what the
fact of the podcast is. You're gonna save it for
when it comes. We gotta save it. Okay. So, um,
(09:50):
you've got the cellulose, the solid matter of wood separating
now from the volatile um gases that are starting to
lift off. That's smoke, right, yes, Okay, the wood, the
solid matter starting to turn into char um. And that
is basically if you if you burn would if you
(10:11):
heat it up and you separate the gases, which are
the smoke, what remains is carbon and what what charcoal
is is charred wood that's had the volatile gases burned
out of it, which is why when you have a
charcoal fire, you don't have smoke, yeah, or not much
at least, yeah, because the gases have already been burned off. Yeah,
(10:34):
and charcoal too. That got that kind of got me
on charcoal filtering because these charcoal is a filter and
I think these it is a scrubber two on smoke stacks.
And uh, if you're like I did some of those
survival articles at one point, and one of the things
you can do to purify water is take your char
from your fire, put it in like you know, cool
(10:55):
it down obviously and then put it in. Then put
it in like a hanky and in running creek water
through that to collect it underneath. That's awesome. And uh,
and there's like real charcoal filters too. But apparently charcoal
has a quality because once it's pure carbon like that,
it um has a knack for filtering out things like
(11:17):
impurities like chlorine and letting other stuff get through. So
that's why it's used as a filter. Yeah, because essentially
what you're making is a carbon filter. Yeah. Charcoal is
like basically pure carbon with all the impurities burned off. Yeah,
those impurities burned off as smoke. They're volatile gases, So
it's pretty neat. Yeah, that's pretty awesome, little survival tip man,
(11:37):
you're killing it today? Well now that this is when
I go to sleep though. Okay, So, um, the third
component of burned wood, You've got the volatile gases smoke,
you have the char the charcoal, which is carbon, and
then you have ash, which is unburnable minerals like um,
calcium or phosphorus, I believe. Yeah, And if you like
(11:58):
you ever cooked with brick ets, charcoal, briqutts, you're gonna
get a lot more ash with that because it has
a lot of more like byproducts in it. Then if
you use like real wood charcoal, right, but they're not
gonna smoke, They're just not gonna burn. It's just gonna
be left over. Like you can't get rid of it.
You can pounded into oblivion, but it's still there. Yeah.
But if you use the real wood coal then a char,
then you'll notice you don't get a lot of that stuff.
(12:19):
Oh is that right? Yeah? Okay, but the cats aren't
as nasty a synthetic Brits. No, they're made from char
and like binding agents and stuff like that. And saw that. No.
I actually used to hear that, like, oh, you can't
cook with briquettes are so nasty. But they're really I
looked into it. It's not super nasty. I mean you
probably should cook with siwihere in between nasty and super nasty. Yeah,
(12:41):
well it's not. It's not as bad as I thought.
I thought it was like a bunch of chemical agents
and glue and cement, and that's not the case. I
got to It's not the hot dogs of cooking materials.
That's the corn dog. Okay, um okay, So we've got
the components right, yeah. Um. As these volatile um gases
(13:03):
continue to heat up um too about five degrees fahrenheit
two six degrees celsius, they the molecules break apart, and
when they break apart, they go to combine with oxygen
oxidation right um. And the same thing happens with the
(13:23):
carbon in the wood, but this takes pace in place
much more slowly. But one of the the stars of
this chemical reaction, this change of breaking down to these
molecules and then the recombining into other things like carbon dioxide,
carbon monoxide. Water. Isn't that weird that fire produces water? Um,
that's why sometimes you have steam coming from a fire,
(13:44):
right um. The star of all this chemical reactions, all
these chemical reactions is heat is produced. Heat, energy is released,
which allows us to cook and be comfortable and feel
secure and all the good stuff that comes with fire exactly.
And because of the heat that's released as these things
are heated up, Um, it is sustainable. That means a
(14:06):
fire is sustainable so long as there's fuel and there's
oxygen present. Yeah. That was the kind of creepy part,
or not creepy, but it's self perpetuating, like that flame
is gonna heat up any fuel near it to the
point where it can release those gases to recombine with oxygen.
It's pretty elegant if you think about it. Yeah. Another
(14:28):
big star of fire besides heat is light, and part
of that is from the same um the carbon atoms right, yeah,
that are combining, that are being torn apart. The molecules
that UM form up the char breaking down in their
constituent carbon atoms when they combine with oxygen, right recombine, Yeah,
(14:51):
I think that would make carbon monoxide. But as they
change um, they they're electrons will go up and erge
level will change orbit and when they come back down
they emit. They release some of that energy that they
have and they release it in the form of photons.
They produce light um and indescence, right, Yeah, it's it's
(15:14):
heat producing light. Like we talked about bioluminescence, where basically
heat up a filament in a light bulb and it glows.
That's the same thing with the fire. It's the same
based on the same principle, which is incandescence. Pretty awesome
and depending on the temperature, uh, different colored light is
going to be produced. Yeah, Like uh you remember the
(15:36):
bunsen burners back in chemistry class and how the buns
and burners have little slots on the side that you
can vary the amount of like oxygen getting in there.
You know, there's the little flickering orange flame of a
buns and burner. Then if you let a lot more
oxygen in, it's going to be more Uh, it's gonna
be more hot. And that's why that's when it's gonna
be that blue jet the same as when you see
(15:58):
like a jet plane, like right next to where the
flame comes out, it's gonna be like really blue, and
then it gets more orange and yellow, you know, like
the Batmobile. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. I know
exactly original bile No. Um, we've seen a bunch of
batmobiles recently. There's a documentary about the Batmobile. That's what
all those were there for a comic con. Okay, we
(16:19):
had a mum and I had our picture taken with
it with which one the new one, the tumbler, that's
what they called the new one, is it? Yeah? The
Chrystalin one is called the tongue. The chrystal one was.
It's awesome, It's pretty cool. Uh so yeah. The the
reason why the blue one happens to be a different
color and hotter is because there's more energy being released,
(16:41):
that's right. Uh. The lower energy and slightly less hot
part of the flame that glows orange yellow is at
the top and um, the reason the flame is pointed
this is this is pretty awesome, not the fact of
the podcast. The space part is okay, I think, all right,
go ahead. Then, So a flame is pointed and it
(17:02):
burns upward because the gases that are burning what you're
burning right there are volatile gases. They're being burned off
right um as they as they burn there, they're hotter,
but they're also less dance and they're moving upward towards
the less dense air above it, which causes it to
be pointed. But if you were to light you take
(17:25):
it for granted, but it's kind of cool to know
how that works. Yeah, that's why it always burns upward. Yeah,
it tends to burn upward. No, it always does, always
burns upward. And that's also why it's pointed too, because
the air around it is dense and it's pushing it in. Right.
Pretty awesome, But if you were to light a fire
in zero gravity, it would burn as a sphere. I
(17:47):
want to see this, I mean, can it be done
if we go into zero gravity? Sure we have, but
I mean they have zero gravity environments? Is do they
a tech? Surely someone has started a fire in one
of those just to see this. I think it's a
really bad thing if a fire starts in a zero
gravity environment. I guess. So that's I just gotta think
that someone's tried this. I'm sure. I'm sure there's a
(18:09):
video of it on YouTube. Now there's probably a good
reason why. And someone's gonna write and say, huge dummies.
Don't you understand that when you start a fire in
zero gravity that we all die? That's right? Yeah? Okay,
(18:43):
so steam, let's talk about steam, because because we talked
about the recombination of atoms, when these gases are released,
the same thing happens when you boil water. You know,
you get this this gas mixing with oxygen in the air,
but it's not going to combust, thank thankfully, or cooking
would be much more dangerous. Um. It's because some of
(19:04):
these atoms aren't as attracted to each other. In the
case of water, for sure, they're tepid towards one another. Yeah.
If you're talking fire, though, they have carbon and hydrogen,
which are really attracted to oxygen, and so they like
to get together and uh combine, recombine more easily, right,
pretty simple. Uh. And then we've been talking mostly about
(19:24):
wood as a fuel, but tons of things are are fuel.
Gasoline is a good fuel. Gasoline doesn't produce char. Basically,
heat vaporizes gasoline into nothing but volatile gases which burn. Yeah,
that's so, there you go. And I always heard too
that gasoline ignites like the vapor ignites, not the liquid.
(19:45):
Is that true? Yeah, okay, yeah, it's not the it's
not the liquid, it's the gas. But heat causes all
that liquid to turn into the gas. Which, um, So
different fuels are going to catch at different temperature, and
no matter what the fuel, it'll have a piloted ignition
(20:06):
temperature and an unpiloted ignition temperature. Basically, the piloted ignition
temperature is that um that point that temperature where the
volatile gases are being released and they're heated up to
the point where if you introduce a spark, it would
blow up. That's right. One of the defining characteristics of
(20:28):
a volatile gas is that um it basically disperses at
room temperature, I believe, right, Um, So at some point
introducing a spark is gonna set that off at some temperature,
which I guess means that like if you have gasoline
cooled to enough of a temperature, just lighting a match
next to it won't set off the gas. I don't
(20:51):
know if this is a question we should be raising
a general audience. Don't try this. I'm curious, so we'll
have to check that out. But the piloted ignition temperature
is basically when something gets hit by lightning and the
heat is so intense that there's no need for a spark.
It just heats it up the point where now it's
on fire, where it come bust. Pretty cool. And I
(21:12):
try to get to the origin of pilot like a
pilot light, which is the same thing, I guess, and
I couldn't find it. I don't know where that came from, because, yeah,
I think about it, You've got the gas burning and
the it's glowing, yeah, and then you just hit the
spark and then bam, you just ignited the gas. So
it's at the pilot, the piloted ignition temperature, and your
hot water heater. But I'm sure someone knows the answer
(21:34):
to that, so if you do send it in. We're
raising a lot of questions in this one and giving
some answers. Um the shape, and by shape usually they
mean like surface area of a of a fuel effects
how efficiently it burns and how easily it burns too. Yeah,
I mean this is pretty basic. Like if you have
(21:55):
a big thick log, obviously you're going to have way
less surface area exposed and combustible then if you had
like a toothpick. Yeah, and it can absorb a lot
more heat too, big thick log um. But yeah, if
you have a bunch of little pieces of wood, it's
gonna burn more quickly, catch more easily because there's more
exposed surface surface temperature and more of that fuels is
(22:17):
exposed to the heat than a big, like you said,
a big log or something. Yeah, and that's why when
you're starting you know, if you ever watched a bear
grills do this thing or less stroud, they try to
get the little like tiny little shavings from the inside
of h like you peel away the bark on a
tree and then get the shavings off of the tree itself.
And that's the stuff that's gonna like really combust easily
(22:38):
through friction with like, uh, you know, there's different ways
of doing the little I've never been I've never done that.
Have you have you started a fire using like friction?
Have you really, that's impressive. I do that stuff when
I go camping now for fun, like in front of
the real fire. You know that we started with our
big lighters, and I'm sitting there with my beer and
(22:59):
my Southern comfort in my comfy chair and the steak
is on the grill. I'll do some little survival stuff
just kind of for fun. You know. That's cool until
I get tired of it and give up. Yeah, but yeah,
it's fun. Um, Well, hats off to you for knowing
how to do that. Well, it's pretty easy. I mean
there's different ways. There's the plow method or the little
(23:20):
bow uh where you make the little string to bow. Yeah,
and do that little number. Yeah, I've seen that one. Yeah,
there's the castaway one. Yeah, that's the plow method. Oh
that's plow. Yeah, that makes sense. They'd be called that
you anything else, I don't think. So do you do
you do you feel like we explain this correctly? And well? Yeah,
I mean it's it's pretty basic chemistry. We're basically heat
(23:43):
breaks down a fuel so that it can combine with
oxygen and ignite, yeah, and then burned. That's right, And
it's self sustaining so long as there's fuel and oxygen,
and then all you need is a bear skin rug
and some cinemax and you're all set for Friday night. Awesome.
Gets Uh. If you want to know more about fire,
you can type fire into the search bar at how
(24:05):
stuffworks dot com and that will bring up this article
and plenty of other stuff too. Um, maybe even some
survival stuff by one Charles W. Bryant. Uh. And I
said search bar. So it's time for a listener mail.
I'm gonna call this email a bad to the bone
so uh. Joscelyn Stone here in Victoria, BC, Canada, apparently
(24:30):
hates bad to the Bone just as much as I do.
So we are We're friends in that way, uh, she says.
A few years ago, my partner Tim discovered that he
could set anything on his heart desired on his alarm
clock for his cell phone. He searched for the perfect
song and decided on Bad to the Bone. Tim believed,
in order to slowly get himself ready for the day,
(24:50):
he needed alarms at five am, five thirty and six.
I hate that stuff. I, on the other hand, wake
up without an alarm at six thirty without fail. What
I do? All right? Um? Every morning I was shocked
by the full volume darn and or an air, I
would the way to wake up right there. I would
blast up to a sitting position in bed, my heart
(25:12):
exploding out of my chest, and look next to me
at Tim, who was sleeping through the whole event. I
would punch him, get up and turn off the alarm myself,
and then repeat this two more times. What kind of
business partners are these? I don't think their business partners.
That was like an American beauty remember that? Oh yeah,
it's like I'd like you to meet my partner. He's like, oh,
what line of work you guys? That was a quantum
(25:34):
bleap meeting load star. Huh wow, yeah, look at you. Um.
For some reason, no matter how much I begged him,
he wouldn't change the song or let me turn down
the volume. If I secretly change it before bed, he
would change it back. But I tried to turn it
off and hide his phone, he would find it and
turn it back again. If I turned the volume down
while he was sleeping, his spidy sense would start tingling
(25:55):
and he'd wake up and turn it back on. It
turned into a game that lasted a full year, finally
ending when I told him the slipper of amusement I
found in the game was gone, and I would throw
his phone into the ocean if he didn't change it.
So eventually she just had enough. It's like, this isn't
fun anymore. We ended up buying an alarm clock radio,
which he also sleeps through. Now, thanks to Tim, every
time you hear bad at the Bone in public, I
(26:17):
immediately leave the area lest I explode in a muddy,
scalding rock going rage like the wamanoo guys or wow,
nice reference. Yeah, so, and then she said, ps do
a podcast on accordions after all that? Jeez, who's that? Jocelyne,
thank you, Joscelyn from Victoria Busi Cannon, thank you, and Tim, Tim,
(26:41):
good luck. Tim and Joscelyn helped you guys find a
yes song you could both agree on. Agreed, and Tim
just get up, dude? Is it some for some people?
It's hard. I never understood the snooze because wouldn't you
rather to sleep that time? No, I'm with you, but
I'm saying, like, instead of being woken up every ten minute,
not that easy to just wake right up, right eyed
(27:03):
and bushy tail, and to accept others as they are. Uh,
let's see what do we what do we want? Um? Geez,
I don't know. I don't know either. We'll have to
figure it out. Yeah, um yeah, send us anything. I
guess this is. It's a generic call out. You can
send us anything via Twitter at s y s K podcast.
(27:27):
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
you Should Know and send us an email containing anything.
And if you send us an email it just says
anything like, you'll be one of five thousand people that
do that, so just stop. Um. You can send that
email that doesn't just say anything to stuff podcast at
how stuff Works dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
(27:50):
a production of iHeart Radios. How Stuff Works for more
podcasts for my Heart Radio is at the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.