James, you explained the chemistry of combustion with such accuracy and detail while still keeping it simple enough for the general public to understand! Your explanation was so on point I think I'm going to adapt it for my own chemistry lectures. Great job to everyone involved!
This is something I see a lot, people seem to have this notion that fire is some sort of form of matter or something. The thing you are seeing is the result of the chemical reactions described in the video (some fuel reacting with oxygen) which is light and heat, the colour of light how much energy the light waves (a sub category of the EM spectrum) have. I suspect if you looked at it under a really powerful microscope you would see atoms bonding and molecules splitting as well as all the light.
That dates back to the origins of the typewriter. Early typewriters used metal arms to print the letters onto paper. It was found that if neighbouring keys were pressed too quickly, the arms of the typewriter would jam. The QWERTY layout was designed so that letters that were commonly next to one another in words were spaced far apart on the keyboard. Thus eliminating the chance of jams occurring.
They're laid out like that so that letters that are commonly used next to each other aren't next to each other on the keyboard. This was done for when typewriters were being used to stop the mechanics from getting jammed if letters next to each other were pressed.
You said when you blow, you're giving it more oxygen. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you're mistaken. High wind speed means lower pressure, lower pressure means less oxygen. It's the same effect that happens when you blow in between two empty soda cans, they are pulled together.
simple answer: the flame is a combination of the solids and gases that are being expelled from the fuel source and are undergoing chemical reactions to form new compounds. the heat energy of these excited molecules are what you are seeing, they all emit light but not all of it is visible. different chemicals emit different way lengths of light, some are visual such as the example of wood and some are not visible because they dont give a wavelength that you can see, such as methanol.
The video was about flame and said colour indicates temperature. Flame comes from oxidisation - not fusion, but does the same still apply? Can you use colour to determine the temperature of fusion? The colour of stars, like the sun, is used to determine distance and speed - via the dopler effect and the Hubble constant. Presumably it tells us the temperature, too - albeit within a very different range. (i.e. I am sure the sun is hotter than a yellow flame at 1200 celcius!)
Subbed but not irritated when they ask the unknown number of viewers who aren't to do so. "Oh no they took a few seconds out of this free content to promote themselves! Outrageous!"
+888SpinR I'd say it's a borderline case, because it's so small. It is also comparatively easily made without organic means. In fact, there are clouds of ethanol and methanol in space.
In fact, "white" is pretty much (by definition) the colour of daylight, in the sense that it's the colour our eyes see as neutral. This would be true regardless of the colour of the Sun; our vision would simply have adapted to whichever star we evolved near. Due to the effect of the Earth's atmosphere, the Sun looks slightly yellow, while a lot of blue light radiates from the rest of the sky. The result is shadows look slightly bluer than lit areas, but the average is what we call "white".
1:00 you should of talked about how when you rub the match on the sand paper it creates friction, which creates heat, which causes the chemicals on the match to reach ignition.
Fires actually have helped species survive even before it was used as a tool by humans. Forest fires produce open areas with fertile soil. A series of overlapping areas of fire over time creates opportunities for new plant species to be introduced and thus increases biodiversity. This then promotes more biodiversity in animal species that rely on various plants for food and shelter.
Can you get James to do one on wave mechanics? Like why, when sitting at a stoplight, all the blinkers on the cars ahead of you synch for a moment and then go in a seemingly random pattern?
There are four components of fire: Heat, Fuel, Oxygen, and an Uninhibited Chemical Chain Reaction. You can extinguish a fire by inhibiting the reaction in the presence of the other three.
It would take an enormous amount of wind to put out a fire but it is true that heat is being taken away. What we breathe out isn't pure CO2 so you can still blow on a candle without it going out
Well, in this case a difference between 1200 and 1500 degrees is 20%. Thus a rough but still rather accurate estimate compared to putting your hand in the flame to measure it which doesn't matter after ~70 degrees, the pain is the same.
Hi. It's mainly because Sun doesn't have oxygen with which hydrogen (which there is plenty of) could react to make water. Additionally, the temperatures in the Sun are so high that elements exist as plasma; nucleus (protons) and electrons separated - and since it's just the electrons that participate in chemical reactions (and burning is a chemical reaction), it wouldn't quite work at those temperatures anyway - but other reactions (nuclear ones) can and do in fact happen in the Sun.
I've got two related questions. How do the cells in our body hold themselves together? Or for a different take on that, how did the early single celled organisms on Earth evolve into multicellular organisms?
"How do the cells in our body hold themselves together?" as simple as possible: Strong force for atoms (quarks/leptons -> protons/neutrons = nucleus -> atoms) Elektroweak force for molecules Gravity for everything else that moleculs form Strong and Eletroweak force keep us from merging with everthing else around us that Gravity is trying to "push" or "Pull" us into.
They alphabet you used to write that comment is descended from the first alphabet created by the Pheonicians or Hebrew, most likely developed from the Egyptian Hieroglyphics. Because other alphabets based on this (like Arabic) have roughly the same order, it was presumed that the person who made the alphabet made it in a certain order, and it stayed that way. New alphabets that came from it changed a bit, but were still similar.
well, it would be the leftovers of the fuel's reaction with the oxygen, vaporized. Like when burning wood, it isn't actual wood being vaporized, it is carbon dioxide, water vapor and particles that smoke is made of, being heated and emitting light.
For those who saw the wal-mart commercial at the beginning...don't expect things to be in stock even if they have been advertised. They will let you wait 30 mins until telling you they sold out 2 days ago.
you would see the molecules of the fuel break apart, and make other binds woth the oxygen. the fire itself is heated gas, which are so hot the emit light.
Well he explains how fire Is created and what happens to the fuel.. But I didn't get quite what Is the flame. I wanted to know more about the volatile gases and the exothermic reaction.
Your breath has oxygen in it (along with carbon dioxide and a few other things). That's why we (used to) blow into someone's lungs during mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Doesn't blowing on a candle also lower the amount of oxygen, compared to the carbon dioxide you're exhaling, near the candle, thus removing, or at least diminishing, that part of the triangle too?
Because the inventor of the typewriter decided to put commonly used letters in easy to reach locations on the keyboard, and people who were fluent with typewriters wanted to be able to use that skill on computers as well, and here we are.
The fire triangle: the three elements a fire needs to ignite: heat, fuel, and an oxidizing agent (usually oxygen). The fire tetrahedron includes the addition of a component, the chemical chain reaction. 3:32 To put out a fire you need to remove any of the four conditions.
You can, there are a ton of different keyboard layouts. Its just qwerty is the most common. There are layouts that are optimised for faster typeing by putting the common keys next to your fingers and the less coomon ones (z,j etc) further away from your fingers so that they dont have to spend as much time travelling therefore faster typing. But personally i hate the alphabetical on screen keyboards because i cant find the letters, what ever you are used to i guess.
Is it true that combustion is, basically, simply an oxidation reaction? Also, based on things I have learned in the past, I have often postulated that we, humans, are also just a big, slow, combustion reaction. I'd like to know if I'm correct, at least by definition. Thanks.
you have to make the leap here. the fire is the chemical reactions, the flame is the visual light cause by said chemical reaction. volatile gases are not fire or flames, they are just gases . fire/ flames are the exothermic reactions that produce waves of energy in a spectrum that you can visually see. these reactions of course being the result of a substance oxidizing under intense heat. does that make a little more sense?
the principle remains the same, you are witnessing the by-products of the chemical reactions of the fuel source and the oxygen. they (the by products of the fuel source being burned) are just emitting a different wavelength than 'traditional' orange/yellow flames, so chemicals produce wavelengths that you can not see with your eyes bacause the wave length doesnt fall in the 'visual spectrum', methanol is a great example of this.
I get that Its not a "solid" thing.. Its just that I can't get exactly what It Is... Like light Is made of photons and heat it's the vibration of the molecules. But what gives the fire Its shape and characteristics? What happens at a atomic level when you heat oil to the ignition point? Is It the fuel vaporized and heated up so It emits light?
Now I know this sounds insane. but how hot would Blake fire be. If white fire can be 15,000 degrees. how hot would a fire be if in the opposite side of the spectrum
Hah I'm not the only one who thought he said Stig. Anyone who's done catering theory should've done a bit about fire fuels. Anyway I was expecting him to mention something on hot air balloons
the bottom of Jeremy Clarkson's ashtray haha love it
I love his humor it catches you off guard haha
the humour is pretty... LIT... get it... cause it is on FIRE.... ok.. I'll leave now
James, you explained the chemistry of combustion with such accuracy and detail while still keeping it simple enough for the general public to understand! Your explanation was so on point I think I'm going to adapt it for my own chemistry lectures. Great job to everyone involved!
I thought the fire triangle was heat, Jeremy Clarkson and a caravan?
some say he is only ignitable under water.
and that he is fascinated by James Mays wobbling hair.
all we know is, he is called the Stig!
You're in luck! James takes on 'How Do Magnets Works?' this Friday 6th Sep. Hope you enjoy it.
You just answered a 25y/o question for me...... I use to sit by the camp fire thinking, what is it made of... what IS fire
...thanks James
Every time I heard "Stick" I heard "Stig".
I watch too much Top Gear....
Same here :)
Me too
English Muffinz best thing is he wouldn't say a word, perhaps not even run. Probably would just get in the nearest car and drive into a lake
What is the ignition point of the Stig?
Peter Gogola a bit below the steering wheel and to one side.
My mixtape
what is love?
I love how he still pokes fun at Jeremy even in another series
great teaching. saw many vids but this one explained it right
That got dark at the end.
Love how everything was resting on the counter and the spaceman was running around the floor in the zero gravity situation haha
Great explanation.
JAMES MAY, YOU HAVE NO IDEA OF THE POWER YOU COULD COMMAND!
THAT WAS FIREEEE BRO
If only I could be so grossly incandescent...
+Robin Powell \[T]/
this is an excellent point
Very well put.
I AM THE GOD OF HELLFIRE, AND I BRING YOU.. FIRE!
Damned + Sulphur + Oxygen + Heat goes to Damned-dioxide, Sulphur-Dioxide
When flint was off his nut so maximus stepped in to do the song. Ahhh those were the rave days.
Thanks for stressing that lighting a fire in a zero-gravity environment is a bad idea. I had been planning on doing that today.
Hey James May! I like when you drive fast cars, as well as talk about science.
This is something I see a lot, people seem to have this notion that fire is some sort of form of matter or something. The thing you are seeing is the result of the chemical reactions described in the video (some fuel reacting with oxygen) which is light and heat, the colour of light how much energy the light waves (a sub category of the EM spectrum) have. I suspect if you looked at it under a really powerful microscope you would see atoms bonding and molecules splitting as well as all the light.
That dates back to the origins of the typewriter.
Early typewriters used metal arms to print the letters onto paper. It was found that if neighbouring keys were pressed too quickly, the arms of the typewriter would jam.
The QWERTY layout was designed so that letters that were commonly next to one another in words were spaced far apart on the keyboard. Thus eliminating the chance of jams occurring.
They're laid out like that so that letters that are commonly used next to each other aren't next to each other on the keyboard. This was done for when typewriters were being used to stop the mechanics from getting jammed if letters next to each other were pressed.
Very nice !
0:51 Did he just say, "I do this by holding the match under the stig"? Haha!
we would need about 3 weeks of video for that, and all scientists from the globe
You said when you blow, you're giving it more oxygen. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you're mistaken. High wind speed means lower pressure, lower pressure means less oxygen. It's the same effect that happens when you blow in between two empty soda cans, they are pulled together.
when you think of volatile gases, you are usually referring to gases that are highly flammable. i hope of this helps
simple answer: the flame is a combination of the solids and gases that are being expelled from the fuel source and are undergoing chemical reactions to form new compounds. the heat energy of these excited molecules are what you are seeing, they all emit light but not all of it is visible. different chemicals emit different way lengths of light, some are visual such as the example of wood and some are not visible because they dont give a wavelength that you can see, such as methanol.
Awesome! Haha, I have watched the video, but I bet it will be!
combustion is a more rapid oxidation, a lot more heat is released and the process occurs relativly fast as oposed to the oxidation of iron
this is my personal favorite :3
The video was about flame and said colour indicates temperature. Flame comes from oxidisation - not fusion, but does the same still apply? Can you use colour to determine the temperature of fusion? The colour of stars, like the sun, is used to determine distance and speed - via the dopler effect and the Hubble constant. Presumably it tells us the temperature, too - albeit within a very different range. (i.e. I am sure the sun is hotter than a yellow flame at 1200 celcius!)
Yay science!
Subbed but not irritated when they ask the unknown number of viewers who aren't to do so. "Oh no they took a few seconds out of this free content to promote themselves! Outrageous!"
this video was published on my birthday..yay! I would to ask "why do we like to ask questions?"
Vsause has a video on that, it's another brilliant factual channel and after watching a few of his videos you'll be a genius
b-b-but methanol is organic too
+888SpinR I'd say it's a borderline case, because it's so small. It is also comparatively easily made without organic means. In fact, there are clouds of ethanol and methanol in space.
"...to set the Stig on fire..." :D
In fact, "white" is pretty much (by definition) the colour of daylight, in the sense that it's the colour our eyes see as neutral. This would be true regardless of the colour of the Sun; our vision would simply have adapted to whichever star we evolved near.
Due to the effect of the Earth's atmosphere, the Sun looks slightly yellow, while a lot of blue light radiates from the rest of the sky. The result is shadows look slightly bluer than lit areas, but the average is what we call "white".
1:00 you should of talked about how when you rub the match on the sand paper it creates friction, which creates heat, which causes the chemicals on the match to reach ignition.
Fires actually have helped species survive even before it was used as a tool by humans. Forest fires produce open areas with fertile soil. A series of overlapping areas of fire over time creates opportunities for new plant species to be introduced and thus increases biodiversity. This then promotes more biodiversity in animal species that rely on various plants for food and shelter.
I’m feeling a bit nostalgic for videos I used to watch
Forgot I made this comment
Can you get James to do one on wave mechanics? Like why, when sitting at a stoplight, all the blinkers on the cars ahead of you synch for a moment and then go in a seemingly random pattern?
There are four components of fire: Heat, Fuel, Oxygen, and an Uninhibited Chemical Chain Reaction. You can extinguish a fire by inhibiting the reaction in the presence of the other three.
It would take an enormous amount of wind to put out a fire but it is true that heat is being taken away. What we breathe out isn't pure CO2 so you can still blow on a candle without it going out
Well, in this case a difference between 1200 and 1500 degrees is 20%. Thus a rough but still rather accurate estimate compared to putting your hand in the flame to measure it which doesn't matter after ~70 degrees, the pain is the same.
Hi. It's mainly because Sun doesn't have oxygen with which hydrogen (which there is plenty of) could react to make water. Additionally, the temperatures in the Sun are so high that elements exist as plasma; nucleus (protons) and electrons separated - and since it's just the electrons that participate in chemical reactions (and burning is a chemical reaction), it wouldn't quite work at those temperatures anyway - but other reactions (nuclear ones) can and do in fact happen in the Sun.
Don't mean to sound like Jeremy Clarkson but these videos do help me fall asleep
I've got two related questions. How do the cells in our body hold themselves together? Or for a different take on that, how did the early single celled organisms on Earth evolve into multicellular organisms?
"How do the cells in our body hold themselves together?"
as simple as possible:
Strong force for atoms (quarks/leptons -> protons/neutrons = nucleus -> atoms)
Elektroweak force for molecules
Gravity for everything else that moleculs form
Strong and Eletroweak force keep us from merging with everthing else around us that Gravity is trying to "push" or "Pull" us into.
Without any prior credible knowledge i thought that if you "blow out a flame on a candle" you detach the fire from its fuel, not remove the heat
They alphabet you used to write that comment is descended from the first alphabet created by the Pheonicians or Hebrew, most likely developed from the Egyptian Hieroglyphics. Because other alphabets based on this (like Arabic) have roughly the same order, it was presumed that the person who made the alphabet made it in a certain order, and it stayed that way. New alphabets that came from it changed a bit, but were still similar.
well, it would be the leftovers of the fuel's reaction with the oxygen, vaporized. Like when burning wood, it isn't actual wood being vaporized, it is carbon dioxide, water vapor and particles that smoke is made of, being heated and emitting light.
For those who saw the wal-mart commercial at the beginning...don't expect things to be in stock even if they have been advertised. They will let you wait 30 mins until telling you they sold out 2 days ago.
No rain check and NO appology
you would see the molecules of the fuel break apart, and make other binds woth the oxygen. the fire itself is heated gas, which are so hot the emit light.
Well he explains how fire Is created and what happens to the fuel.. But I didn't get quite what Is the flame. I wanted to know more about the volatile gases and the exothermic reaction.
0:57 You have a crispy Stig now.
Boy did that escalate quickly in the closing statement. And I thought all I did was to misplace a blanket. D;
What is the space between the flame and the thing that is burning?
I have a question, if something were to explode in space (a vacum), what would happen? What is the energy behind an explosion?
Thank you for the explanation!
***** so if i threw a grenade at you while we were in space nothinig would happen?
setting the Stig on fire!? you crazy people from Headsqueeze! :O
I'd like to know why fences always seem to go round the outside of fields?
Your breath has oxygen in it (along with carbon dioxide and a few other things). That's why we (used to) blow into someone's lungs during mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
so, does this mean that oxidative phosphorylation that occurs within our mitochondriae, is some sort of fire?, is breathing a combustion process?
Doesn't blowing on a candle also lower the amount of oxygen, compared to the carbon dioxide you're exhaling, near the candle, thus removing, or at least diminishing, that part of the triangle too?
Wet tea towel for the chip pan James.
I watch these videos to learn James may's English accent
Because the inventor of the typewriter decided to put commonly used letters in easy to reach locations on the keyboard, and people who were fluent with typewriters wanted to be able to use that skill on computers as well, and here we are.
The fire triangle: the three elements a fire needs to ignite: heat, fuel, and an oxidizing agent (usually oxygen). The fire tetrahedron includes the addition of a component, the chemical chain reaction.
3:32 To put out a fire you need to remove any of the four conditions.
Three conditions m8.. listen carefully
And you should read carefully. He's explaining that there are four conditions and what the fourth is.
You can, there are a ton of different keyboard layouts. Its just qwerty is the most common. There are layouts that are optimised for faster typeing by putting the common keys next to your fingers and the less coomon ones (z,j etc) further away from your fingers so that they dont have to spend as much time travelling therefore faster typing. But personally i hate the alphabetical on screen keyboards because i cant find the letters, what ever you are used to i guess.
Is it true that combustion is, basically, simply an oxidation reaction? Also, based on things I have learned in the past, I have often postulated that we, humans, are also just a big, slow, combustion reaction. I'd like to know if I'm correct, at least by definition. Thanks.
you have to make the leap here. the fire is the chemical reactions, the flame is the visual light cause by said chemical reaction. volatile gases are not fire or flames, they are just gases . fire/ flames are the exothermic reactions that produce waves of energy in a spectrum that you can visually see. these reactions of course being the result of a substance oxidizing under intense heat. does that make a little more sense?
Fire, exclamation mark. Fire, exclamation mark. Fire, exclamation mark
Are there other substances that would behave like oxygen without actually containing it?
How do you generate thrust in a weightless/vacuumed environment ?
oh james your my favorite presenter on top gear you have awesome hair and i would just love to meet you some day!!
What about magnets? How do they work?
How does induction works?
Um, you don't need a silver blanket to put out a chip pan fire, you can also use a hand full or two of baking powder.
the principle remains the same, you are witnessing the by-products of the chemical reactions of the fuel source and the oxygen. they (the by products of the fuel source being burned) are just emitting a different wavelength than 'traditional' orange/yellow flames, so chemicals produce wavelengths that you can not see with your eyes bacause the wave length doesnt fall in the 'visual spectrum', methanol is a great example of this.
Could you say the temperatures in Fahrenheit as well?
it's all about the ending :))
What its the hottest part of a flame and why?
I get that Its not a "solid" thing.. Its just that I can't get exactly what It Is... Like light Is made of photons and heat it's the vibration of the molecules. But what gives the fire Its shape and characteristics? What happens at a atomic level when you heat oil to the ignition point? Is It the fuel vaporized and heated up so It emits light?
The video didn't actually explain what fire is - it did explain what creates fire.
Feynman has a good explanation of what fire is.
The bottom of Jeremy Clarkson's ashtray
Season 20 has recently aired on BBC 2. Season 21 will be with is in probably 6 or so months. Did that answer your question?
So how hot is Green and blue flames?
Now I know this sounds insane. but how hot would Blake fire be. If white fire can be 15,000 degrees. how hot would a fire be if in the opposite side of the spectrum
I thought he said a STIG and a match hahaha. Top Gear reference.
0:41 Please James don't set the Stig on fire... We love him :/
Cool
Hah I'm not the only one who thought he said Stig. Anyone who's done catering theory should've done a bit about fire fuels. Anyway I was expecting him to mention something on hot air balloons
Why does water "evaporate" in the street, on puddles and such?
when he says "stick" i keep hearing "stig" lol
What determines the colour of an object?
How are fingerprints formed, and why are they all different?
by "most of it", I mean after removing all the very basic stuff I already knew.