DAY 2: FIRE SCIENCE LAws…
Fire science: Fire science, why does it even matter? Have you ever watched a Boy Scout trying to light a green tree on fire with a lighter? After a few minutes they have a black stick, a halfway full Bic lighter and no fire. I have, why doesn't it work? Well, the answer is fire science.
So let's talk a little bit about it.
What is fire? Fire is a combination of three things: Heat, oxygen and fuel. We call this the fire triangle. Kick any one leg out of the fire triangle and you do not have fire. Let's break it down a little bit more so that we can understand the nature of what we are actually seeing. Heat shouldn't be a complicated thing for people to understand. Rub your hands together really fast and you will feel Heat. The spark in your lighter is heat. When that spark is thrown into the air, it causes a chemical reaction between butane (fuel) and the oxygen in the air (O2) which gives us fire. If you have ever looked at a fire while it is burning you notice that the flame is about a quarter of an inch above the wood. What is happening here? Well the wood is being heated up by infrared radiation from the flame which is causing it to give off gas which is mixing with oxygen in the air and creating fire.
Okay okay so why does this matter? Well it matters because the main reason your fire doesn't work is because you have water inside of your fuel that is making it cold and taking out that heat part of the equation. Or you smother by leaving it on the ground which is removing the oxygen part of the equation. Or you finally got fire and decided it would be a good idea to put a stick on top of it and remove the oxygen from the fire thus killing your fire. When you understand how important oxygen is to the fire triangle you start to grasp the concept of needing a little bit of space between the bottom stick and the top stick so that the gasses leaving the bottom stick can mix with the oxygen in the air, to start a fire and heat up the top stick without you putting your fire out. In the future when you can't get your fire started, think through it logically. pick it up off the ground with a little Log Cabin. Surround the fire with gray dead standing finely processed wood that isn’t wet, then when you finally get a flame don't go and throw a stick on top of it suffocating it of oxygen.
