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Anonymous Wed 23 Oct 14:26:25 2019 No.11085068 View Reply Original Report

Quoted By: >>11085094 >>11085135

please help me understand how fire works

from what i've learned so far, it seems like it is never a solid object which is burning, but rather the vapors that get released from that object
like how for example, when you burn gasoline, it isn't the liquid which is burning, rather the fumes/vapors that get released from it.
and when you heat up wood, it also starts releasing flammable vapors and it's those vapors that you can see burning (if i'm correct, atleast?)

so am i right in assuming that vapors/fumes/gasses are the only flammable things in the world?
sorry if i sound retarded

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 23 Oct 2019 14:43:00 No.11085094 Report

Quoted By: >>11085115

>>11085068
This isn't true. Vapors burn more quickly because there is a much higher available surface area to oxygen, but solids and liquids still burn. The solid wood really is burning in a campfire, and it's the fact that it's solid that causes it to burn slowly enough to enjoy it.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 23 Oct 2019 14:52:42 No.11085115 Report

Quoted By: >>11085123 >>11085135

>>11085094
i may have not worded my question correctly, but what i meant is, are the visible flames you see in any type of fire always burning vapors?
like, i know when you burn a piece of wood, that this piece of wood is also burning and breaking down. but due to the heat, this piece of wood is releasing flammable vapors, and it's these vapors that create the visible flame?

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 23 Oct 2019 14:55:10 No.11085123 Report

Quoted By: >>11085164

>>11085115
Oh, I see what you mean. Yeah, most of the visible flame is vaporized wood burning.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 23 Oct 2019 15:00:42 No.11085135 Report

Quoted By: >>11085213

>>11085068
>>11085115
Fire has a coloured flame due to the heat exciting the electrons; in whatever the sourced substance may be
Fire is hot because fire is always attributed to exothermic reactions - they release heat when the chemical bonds are broken down.
Fire is most commonly connected with combustion reactions - a type of reaction that involves oxygen and heat, and produces carbon dioxide and water (as the products).

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 23 Oct 2019 15:14:43 No.11085164 Report

Quoted By:

>>11085123
So red, glowing embers are the solid wood burning?

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 23 Oct 2019 15:24:43 No.11085183 Report

Quoted By: >>11085203

also got a question about flashovers
let's say you have a room with random furniture or other solid flammable objects
a nearby fire causes the room to heat up untill all these objects/furniture start releasing flammable vapors in the air.
now the room is getting filled with these vapors while the temperature keeps rising.
is a flashover the point at which the temperature gets so high in the room, that all these vapors spontaneously start burning?

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 23 Oct 2019 15:33:16 No.11085203 Report

Quoted By: >>11085223

>>11085183
Pretty sure that's due to the incomplete combustion of the materials releasing particulate matter (smoke) into the air. This can ignite and burn with the right temp and oxygen levels. That is essentially what gives fire its color as well. The carbon in the particulate matter being given off in smoke ignited and produces the common flame color. Perfect combustion means all this is burned and no smoke is released, just clear CO2 and water vapors.

Fine particles in general will produce that quick burn effect because of the surface area exposed to oxygen and heat.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 23 Oct 2019 15:40:45 No.11085213 Report

Quoted By: >>11085245 >>11085329

>>11085135
but where do the photons come from that create the light? A light bulb doesn't loose mass over time do to photogenic emission, please explain this to me.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 23 Oct 2019 15:46:17 No.11085223 Report

Quoted By: >>11085311

>>11085203
ah i see, so it's not just these vapors that start burning during a flashover, but also the black/grey smoke that was already present inside the room?

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 23 Oct 2019 15:56:16 No.11085245 Report

Quoted By:

>>11085213
The heat that causes light in a light bulb doesn't come from chemical reactions: it comes from electrical energy directly heating the filament. In reality there is a bit of burning, which wears down the filament, but in principle an ideal light bulb doesn't burn at all.
So the source of heat is different between light bulbs and fires, but the cause of light from heat is the same: blackbody radiation, with a few extra peaks at compound-specific emission lines.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 23 Oct 2019 16:23:03 No.11085311 Report

Quoted By:

>>11085223
Yes. Look up efficient wood burning stoves. They all tend to have a secondary comustion chamber for burning the "smoke" so that only CO2 and water gas leave as outputs. Involves having correct air flow rate and temperature. Many buildings built around a thermal mass "rocket" stove are used around the world as a way to heat, power and provide ashes (used in many processes from composting, soil chemistry, lye making, and explosives). You could even go further and collect the CO2 and water as well. Water can condense to liquid (releasing more heat in latent energy) and CO2 can be circulated into a greenhouse or pumped into storage tanks.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 23 Oct 2019 16:29:29 No.11085329 Report

Quoted By: >>11085354

>>11085213
Photons are just generalizations used to describe discrete packets of energy from light sources which simplifies a much more complex multi dimensional wave form. It isn't "a stream of particles" so much as "an energy carrying wave form which periodically emitts energy for our observation here in this dimensional reality". I see the energy emitted as one side of this bipolar entity, much like a magnet with a north and south pole, we are simply observing one side wave form energy. The other "peak" of the wave form is emitting energy "somewhere else".

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 23 Oct 2019 16:39:18 No.11085354 Report

Quoted By: >>11085375

>>11085329
If there was energy being released "somewhere else," then there should be a discrepancy between the starting energy and the detected energy.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 23 Oct 2019 16:47:45 No.11085375 Report

Quoted By: >>11085381

>>11085354
What do you mean by "starting energy". If such a reality is possible where electromagnetic radiation exists as an energy wave form that emits energy continually, but periodically in different "places", then obviously smaller sections of our reality (electrons and the clown posse of "quarks" and whatever) likely also exist in this realm of possibility. So "starting energy" is also subject to change with such a potential truth of our precieved reality.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 23 Oct 2019 16:51:39 No.11085381 Report

Quoted By: >>11085454

>>11085375
A chemical reaction starts with a certain chemical potential energy to be released, and you can use photodetectors and calorimeters to carefully track where all the energy goes. All of it is released in this "reality," there isn't any that goes anywhere else.

Anonymous

Anonymous Wed 23 Oct 2019 17:11:08 No.11085454 Report

Quoted By:

>>11085381
A chemical reaction has been predetermined to have said potential energy due to our understanding of the lower physical laws. We say electromagnetic energy travels like a wave but with little packets of energy because there seems to be a periodic emittance of energy when contacting a surface collecter. But there aren't any observable photons beyond that, and so it's a very flimsy "fact" that we base much proceeding ideas after, like a potential energy of a chemical reaction. If the energy is actually continuous, and the periodic nature is due to the wave form emitting the energy "somewhere else" (in space, up or down in the size spectrum, etc), then all our observed experimental evidence "proving" the photon concept will also be true in this other potential reality. The point here is that a photon is just one hypothesis of what's really going on, just like gravity has many hypothesis though we tend to all accept one prevailing theory pushed hard after the last WW2 (war to end all wars because winners control information). If there's more to these base "facts" we have latched onto then maybe we could be developing better ways to exist in this reality that doesn't invlove so much power structures invloving a small number of rulers, a larger number of direct rulers workers/trusted, a and a majority that fights within a small spectrum of power but are all basically powerless overall.

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