Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Paradox of Fire

When you're trying to start a fire from embers, you blow on them until they burst into flame.

When you want to extinguish a candle, you blow on it until it goes out.

How does that work, exactly?
Posted by Harvey at 1/08/2013 08:23:00 AM

1 comment:

  1. Hehe. Is this your conundrum of the day?
    I would think, just of the top of my head, that since fire needs oxygen to burn, embers have little to no oxygen so you blow to give it the oxygen it needs to ignite.
    Whereas with a candle flame, too much oxygen on a small flame does the reverse.

    But I'm no firefighter.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)