Fighting Fires With Beams of Electricity 137
cylonlover writes "It's certainly an established fact that electricity can cause fires, but a group of Harvard scientists have presented their research on the use of electricity for fighting fires. In a presentation at the 241st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, Dr. Ludovico Cademartiri told of how they used a unique device to shoot beams of electricity at an open flame over one foot tall. Almost immediately, he said, the flame was extinguished. 'Such a device could be used, for instance, to make a path for firefighters to enter a fire or create an escape path for people to exit, he said. The system shows particular promise for fighting fires in enclosed quarters, such as armored trucks, planes, and submarines.'"
Who you gonna call? (Score:2)
Not another obvious joke, the fire department of course! Now with laser beams that are not attached to sharks!
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I'm sure they'll love it, because walking through "beams of electricity" [which I must assume would commonly be known as "bolts of lightning"] instead of fire.
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I think this will probably end up like "Electric Avenue" from Jackass 3D. But with bonus fire. Awesome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vJjBNNVOZ4 [youtube.com]
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Another category of civil servant that you have to tell 'Don't tase me, bro!' when they are coming to your house.
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Submarines... (Score:2, Funny)
So your submarine is on fire, burning up your oxygen, underwater, while you're, say, launching nuclear missiles and being pursued by enemy subs, and your solution is to electrify it?
Awesome. All your base...
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Woo! Time to submit my patent to the PTO:
"Description of Selachimorpha-mounted Electrical Fire Suppression Systems"
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"Cademartiri envisions that futuristic electrical devices based on the phenomenon could be fixed on the ceilings of buildings or ships, similar to stationary water sprinklers now in use."
Hey don't smoke that in here, you might set off th.... burbleburbleburble!
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Capt. Nemo would approve.
I saw a movie once... (Score:1)
... about this "Ludovico technique." It didn't end well.
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logical next step: firesabers (Score:1)
Please oh please.
"beams of electricity"? (Score:3, Interesting)
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No, magic!
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Like streams of electrons or ions?
No, protons baby! Using those has certain... fringe benefits.
Re:"beams of electricity"? (Score:4, Funny)
Like streams of electrons or ions?
No, positrons baby! Using those definitely has certain... fringe benefits.
FTFY
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Comon, proton packs would be awesome.
It has the added benefit of the fire department also being able to reconcile poltergeist infestations.
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Protons are ions. :p
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No, protons baby! Using those has certain... fringe benefits.
Like that they could yell, "fire the proton torpedoes!" when they get to the emergency?
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That would be mixing memes, they are photon torpedos (torpedos of light?)
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Never slime a guy with a positron collider
And never cross the streams. Or was it don't feed them after midnight? Fuck!
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They meant "electric field" but of course they don't know what the difference is between "electricity" and "electric fields".
They only tell you what's really going on if you bother to read the "complex" explanation:
But how does it work? Cademartiri acknowledged that the phenomenon is complex with several effects occurring simultaneously. Among these effects, it appears that carbon particles, or soot, generated in the flame are key for its response to electric fields.
Anyone have any idea how it works? (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone have any idea how this thing actually works?
The best I could come up with is based on a very small part of the article:
So I guess what happens is that the electrical field charges the soot and other light carbony things generated in the fire, which causes them to disperse sort of like what happens with this toy [thinkgeek.com]? How does that help extinguish the fire, though? Wouldn't the outward motion of the carbon particulates just bring in more oxygen?
What other effects are going on?
Re:Anyone have any idea how it works? (Score:4, Interesting)
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It's a Fire Quadrangle. The fourth point is Chemical Reaction. Halon systems work from this angle. It doesn't deprive the fire of oxygen, it disrupts the oxidation process itself. Sounds like this magnetic beam does this also, in a different way.
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At http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/03/28/6362578-fight-fire-with-a-magic-wand was a small statement that helped me wrap my head around this a lot better: "By applying oscillating fields, the effect was much, much larger"
Usually this type of thing would be picked up by mainstream media long after technical papers have been written, but in this case the article says they're still 6 months or more away from understanding it well enough to write papers about it.
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I'll guess:
First thing that comes to mind is "ion wind" [wikipedia.org]. As air ions are usually for the most part consisting of clusters of water molecules [ce-mag.com], ion wind should have cooling effect. The second thing is repelling the oxygen by electrifying the flames with negative charge. However, TA mentions "waves", so perhaps it is all about inducing instability, breaking the convective circulation, dispersing the flames to lower the temperature bellow ignition point ...
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Fire's an ongoing dynamic process. Using electrical fields to temporarily disrupt it puts several parts of the process on hold, potentially damping the fire. At that point, conditions would have to be right for it to spontaneously restart.
That latter part is the reason why I'm dubious that this would be of much use beyond as a parlor trick. Conditions are almost always right for a major fire, and existing extinguishing methods are probably superior (at least adequate and easier to bottle) for a minor fire.
Some idea (Score:5, Informative)
Flames are ionised (i.e. charged) particles. If you have a strong enough electric field (which is really not the same as 'shooting electricity' as per the article) when the charged particles move through the electric field there will be a force on them perpendicular to their motion and to the field i.e. the flame will curve over into spiral.
If you could get this to happen on a large enough scale, the flame would suppress itself as instead of the flame moving away from the fuel it would hang around - stopping oxygen from reaching the fuel.
If this all sounds really unlikely, that's because it is. Here it a video showing an electric field affecting a small candle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fKGeV4NrrA&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL [youtube.com]
It looks like you need an electric field on the order of 10keV per 5cm to get this effect. So if you wanted to do it on a fire that was say 5 meters across you'd need an electric field in the order of 1MV which while obtainable is not exactly an easy thing to setup - particularly when there's a fire going on.
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Flames are ionised (i.e. charged) particles. If you have a strong enough electric field (which is really not the same as 'shooting electricity' as per the article) when the charged particles move through the electric field there will be a force on them perpendicular to their motion and to the field i.e. the flame will curve over into spiral.
If you could get this to happen on a large enough scale, the flame would suppress itself as instead of the flame moving away from the fuel it would hang around - stopping oxygen from reaching the fuel.
If this all sounds really unlikely, that's because it is. Here it a video showing an electric field affecting a small candle:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fKGeV4NrrA&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL [youtube.com]
It looks like you need an electric field on the order of 10keV per 5cm to get this effect. So if you wanted to do it on a fire that was say 5 meters across you'd need an electric field in the order of 1MV which while obtainable is not exactly an easy thing to setup - particularly when there's a fire going on.
And yet, according to TFA, the researchers were able to extinguish a foot-high flame (presumably fed via compressed gas of some sort) with only a 600 watts of electricity AND they suspect they could do it with much less.
In the new study, they connected a powerful electrical amplifier to a wand-like probe and used the device to shoot beams of electricity at an open flame more than a foot high. Almost instantly, the flame was snuffed out. Much to their fascination, it worked time and again.
The device consisted of a 600-watt amplifier, or about the same power as a high-end car stereo system. However, Cademartiri believes that a power source with only a tenth of this wattage could have similar flame-suppressing effect. That could be a boon to firefighters, since it would enable use of portable flame-tamer devices, which perhaps could be hand-carried or fit into a backpack.
I'm not saying your calculation is wrong, but it certainly diverges dramatically from the information supplied in TFA. (What little there is.) If the researcher is correct, then we are looking at a device potentially as low-powered as a 60 watt electric amplifier. That's small enough to b
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And yet, according to TFA, the researchers were able to extinguish a foot-high flame (presumably fed via compressed gas of some sort) with only a 600 watts of electricity AND they suspect they could do it with much less.
Watts != voltage differential
If there is no electricity being carried then a small power supply can build up an almost arbitrarily high electric field, until it either either arcs or the electric field becomes strong enough to start electrons streaming from it as an ion wind.
foot-high flame (presumably fed via compressed gas of some sort)
That sounds like it could have been a bunsen burner - i.e. the flame could still have just been a centimeter or two across, which is a much easier fire to deal with that a wide fire. In fact you could probably put that flame out by just
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You may very well be correct. But then, that is what research is for, isn't it?
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Which is why I said that it doesn't have to be a LiPo. I know their drawbacks, I use them regularly. That said, Insulation and basic liquid cooling would be helpful in staving off overheating.
The use for a man-carried device would be limited anyway. It is doubtful a firefighter would want to carry ANY large battery pack into a raging inferno. The application would more likely be from an initial approach vector. IE: Start outside the fire and bore a pathway into it for a short distance, much like they
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And yet, according to TFA, the researchers were able to extinguish a foot-high flame (presumably fed via compressed gas of some sort) with only a 600 watts of electricity AND they suspect they could do it with much less.
Probably generated with a Fleischmann/Pons cold fusion generator they whipped together from spare parts.
Let's see how this discovery fares in independent validation.
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600W? A deep-cycle automotive battery has something like 1.3KWh of capacity. Plenty of power.
Re:Some idea (Score:5, Interesting)
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Flames are ionised (i.e. charged) particles. If you have a strong enough electric field (which is really not the same as 'shooting electricity' as per the article) when the charged particles move through the electric field there will be a force on them perpendicular to their motion and to the field i.e. the flame will curve over into spiral.
That's for a magnetic field. Charged particles move along the direction of electric fields.
Electric and magnetic field confused (Score:5, Informative)
Sir,
You have electric and magnetic fields confused with each other. If you have a MAGNETIC FIELD, when charged particles move across (NOT along) it, there is a force on them perpendicular to their motion (and to the field, incidentally).
In an electric field, the force on the charged particle depends on the orientation of the electric field, not on the orientation of the charged particle's momentum.
I refer you to the Lorentz equation, which goes like this:
F = q (E + V cross B)
where capital letters denote vector quantities and "cross" is the cross-product operator. As you can see, the force from the electric field (q times E) is parallel to E. The force from the magnetic field (q V cross B) is perpendicular to both the magnetic field and the particle's velocity.
I'm not sure whether the rest of your explanation holds water--when you have a rapidly changing electric field it is accompanied by a magnetic field, which WILL curve particles like you say. In fact, when you have both, you have what is called an "E cross B" drift, in which charged particles have a motion perpendicular to both the E and the B field. (Is that what you meant?)
And yes, IAAP.
--PeterM
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Pro tip: next time do some research before posting.
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Since a static charge will do, it's not as hard as you might think, at least indoors.
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A diode can be constructed by trying to pass a small current through a probe in the flame. This diode is caused by the movement of ions through the flame area. However, I wonder what would happen if you tried to pass a larger current through the flame? Might it be able to temporarily neutralize or bind the ions to other molecules? If it did that, would you still have a flame?
I don't know. I'm just speculating.
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A diode can be constructed by trying to pass a small current through a probe in the flame. This diode is caused by the movement of ions through the flame area. However, I wonder what would happen if you tried to pass a larger current through the flame? Might it be able to temporarily neutralize or bind the ions to other molecules? If it did that, would you still have a flame?
I don't know. I'm just speculating.
Do you mean that while the probe is in the flame current will flow through it in one direction but not the other, or that the act of putting it in the flame and running current through it will cause it to have the properties of a diode after it has been removed from the flame? Your use of the word "constructed" has me unsure.
Of what is this probe made? Is it U-shaped? (current can't just go to end of conductor and stop, it has to get back to its point of origin)
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Do you mean that while the probe is in the flame current will flow through it in one direction but not the other, or that the act of putting it in the flame and running current through it will cause it to have the properties of a diode after it has been removed from the flame? Your use of the word "constructed" has me unsure.
Of what is this probe made? Is it U-shaped? (current can't just go to end of conductor and stop, it has to get back to its point of origin)
I meant the former. Google flame diode and you'll see what I'm talking about. Many gas stoves and furnaces now use this technique to assure a flame is present.
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If they're able to cause the carbon atoms to form C60 and then drop to the ground...
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So I guess what happens is that the electrical field charges the soot and other light carbony things generated in the fire
An electric field can't charge anything -- charge is produced by charged particles. An electric field is just a field. However, it can separate charges if strong enough, and it can influence charged particles. You can test this yourself by putting a lit candle in a microwave. Obviously do not do this in your fancy microwave.
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I don't know... I do know that if you put a burning candle into a microwave oven that because the fire is a conductive plasma, that its sort of like putting metal into the microwave. The conductive plasma gets inflated by the energy of the microwaves to like the size of a grapefruit or larger. And it's bright too! Way fun.
Firefighters are usually wet. (Score:2)
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we already have a grenade like device that will snuff out a fully engulfed house for 12 minutes the only side effect is a fine white powder on everything.
Is the device called Charlie Sheen?
no, it *is* Charlie Sheen (Score:1)
but it's called WINNING.
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Not all of use use Scott packs... ours are MSA.
Second, please give me more information about this "grenade like device that will snuff out a fully engulfed house", because I'm sure our chief would like to buy a case or three of them to try out. It would make things a lot easier if all we had to do was lob a grenade into a house instead of humping a bunch of hose.
To get back on subject, this technology doesn't appear to do anything to cool the heated gases down, put out smoldering embers, get rid of smoke o
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Not all of use use Scott packs... ours are MSA.
Second, please give me more information about this "grenade like device that will snuff out a fully engulfed house", because I'm sure our chief would like to buy a case or three of them to try out. It would make things a lot easier if all we had to do was lob a grenade into a house instead of humping a bunch of hose.
To get back on subject, this technology doesn't appear to do anything to cool the heated gases down, put out smoldering embers, get rid of smoke or prevent reignition (or backdraft/flashover). Putting the flame out is great, but without adequate ventilation and some means to cool the surroundings, you're not doing too much for the people inside. Everything else will still have to be done the old way.
A quick google and I wonder if it's these stat X grenades. Every house should have some. http://www.jhcfirestopbuyamericanmaterials.com/stat-xgrenade.html [slashdot.org]">
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Re:Firefighters are usually wet. (Score:4, Insightful)
Except if firefighters use electricity instead of water to extinguish the flames, they won't be wet. Fire trucks seem like good places to keep a large mobile battery, or a capacitor for recharging from power lines nearby the disconnected building, or a transformer while the building is disconnected. Or maybe buildings will have fire suppression power equipment installed that uses this electric effect.
The point is that electricity replaces water, so they don't have to mix.
Ever hear of "sweat"? (Score:2)
Except if firefighters use electricity instead of water to extinguish the flames, they won't be wet.
It's not all from the fire suppression sprays. Some of it is called "sweat". Lots of salt in it so it's very conductive. Drops the skin resistance by several orders of magnitude.
People tend to emit a lot of it, coating their bodies, when covered with protective gear, toting lots of heavy fire suppression gear or rescued victims, jogging up and down stairs, or hacking their way through doors or walls, all i
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Thanks, that is the first ok commentary I've seen. That should be the title of the article... Now I'm thinking if I should tag it.
There is no need to save the peole if you electrocute all of them while fighting the fire. Oh, and for the other posts that say you won't need to bring water, well, those people are made of water, and quite condutive. People normaly don't face kV/cm electrical fields very nicely, most of them fall out dead, and after a while start to burn.
That said, it could be t
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1)Plenty of people work around high voltage equipment in wet environments.
2)Strong electric fields don't necessarily mean exposed conductors.
3)A device like this would lead to less of a need to be completely sopping wet.
Fire is a feedback process. A flame heats material till it outgasses. The gasses rise up into heat till they chemically react with the oxygen in the air, an exothermic process that feeds energy back to help outgas and burn more mass from the parent material. If you can interrupt the addit
REALLY want video! (Score:5, Insightful)
If there's a story that is crying out for some audio-visual documentation, this had got to be it!
I mean electricity and fire (and maybe they use a laser to create an ionized channel for the electricity to go through).
Magnesium (Score:1)
If they can put out a magnesium fire with this device then I will be impressed. I would also like to see it tested in a room full of hydrogen/oxygen mix.
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Re:Magnesium (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's see them take on a metal-fluoride fire! For those, I've always recommended a good pair of running shoes.
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I would also like to see it tested in a room full of hydrogen/oxygen mix.
Either you just mean a room full of water vapor, or it will just be a room full of water vapor in about a split second if it ignites. Minus whatever water vapor escaped when the roof blew off.
Fire, Schmire ! (Score:3)
Evil Overlord Notice #1 : Discontinue Operation : Weaponize Shark immediately.
Evil Overlord Notice #2 : The Commissary of Evil will be serving fish sticks all week.
Don't cross the beams... (Score:1)
"Shooting beams of electricity" sounds like Ghostbusters, not real world physics.
Birthday party fun... (Score:3)
This would be a fun way of extinguishing the candles on your birthday cake...
Might even work with those "prankster" candles that relight ... :)
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yeah, that'll shut the little buggers up.
Using calcium? (Score:1)
Why does it work? (Score:1)
I'm not feeling very competent, but:
a) Soot particles aggregate, lowering their surface-to-volume ratio, shutting down the combustion, or
b) Soot particles escape the plasma, shutting down combustion, or
c) Electron flow from the gun interferes with the combustion reaction itself, which would be awesome
0329 (Score:1)
Beams of electricity (Score:1)
And what the hell are beams of electricity?
Give it a chance guys! (Score:2)
Come on! Fire, water, and now beams of electricity! What could happen! [scrapetv.com]
Finally, (Score:1)
Seen this technology before! (Score:3)
Danilo Odell: Yeah, what the hell was that thing?
Lieutenant Worf: Automated fire system. A force field contains the flame until the remaining oxygen has been consumed.
Danilo Odell: Ah, yeah, w-what if I had been under that thing?
Lieutenant Worf: You would have been standing in the fire.
Danilo Odell: Yeah, well, leaving that aside for the moment, I mean, what would have happened to me?
Lieutenant Worf: You would have suffocated and died.
Danilo Odell: Ye-ah, sweet mercy.
After a few hours, all the jokes are taken! (Score:2)
If this were a 1930s pulp magazine story (Score:2)
the next thing is that the brilliant doctor would be kidnapped by the evil Fu-Ling, who would use the invention to down airplanes by inhibiting their internal combustion engines. Fortunately the hero's plane is atomic powered.
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How about a 1980's Subgenius Pulp Story?
From "Bob and The Oxygen Wars"
view-source:http://www.subgenius.com/bigfist/classic/classictales/OxygenWars1.html
What the hey? (Score:2)
This must occur more often than I realize.
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This must occur more often than I realize.
Think armoured personnel carriers, armoured fighting vehicles, tanks, etc. Right now they generally use halon which, while fairly effective at putting out fires, also has a tendency to suffocate and/or poison anyone who survived the initial hit.
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Well, electrocuting everybody won't be any better. Just remember, several kV/cm is way stronger than a normal lightining.
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I think amperage is kinda important, too. High voltage low amps just means you'll end up tazing everyone in the vehicle. Sucks, but better than death.
I'm not saying this system would actually work in that role - they haven't provided nearly enough data for me to make any serious comments on it. I'm just pointing out that they're probably talking about combat vehicles rather than a Brinks truck.
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Well, the current you'll apply on a conductor is a function of the electrical field, you can't simply choose it. What you can do is restrict the time you apply that current, reducing the charge, but the device needs to transfer some charge to work.
I maintain that a powder based extinguisher is simpler, cheaper and safer.
Ghost Busters? (Score:1)
icon (Score:2)
While you used Einstein as the 'icon' for this article, Tesla would have been more on target here.
Er... (Score:2)
On the face of it, I can't imagine that firemen would be really pleased at this.
Let's see we have fire, smoke, water, (and in the examples they gave) all-metal vehicles. Let's toss in some high-voltage electricity?
far freakin' out! (Score:2)
Maybe a legitimate patent, for a change? (Score:2)
It strikes me that this could be one of the FEW inventions that are actually worthy of a patent.
Also, I wonder how scalable this technology is. The explicitly say in the article that this wouldn't work well for a forest fire: why not?
Another thing I wonder is this: if you put out a fire with water, you cool down the stuff that's burning as well as removing oxygen. If your new flame suppressor is applied to a hot pile of, say, burning wood, the flame may go away as long as it's pointed at it, but wouldn'
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Get you a good hot fire going on your grill, and then cover it with the lid for a minute. You will see that it depends on how long you keep the fire down. Pop the lid off as soon as you see the flame go down, and it will flash back up. Hold the lid down for a few more seconds, and you will notice that the flame comes back, but rather slowly. Hold it down a little longer, and you may have to get your lighter out to start it back up.
Fire is a feedback process. A flame heats material till it outgasses. T
Awesome (Score:2)
Popular Mechanics? (Score:2)
This sounds like a Popular Mechanics article from the 1930's. "Fighting Fires With Beams Of Electricity -- From Zeppelins!"
maybe a tad pessemistic (Score:2)
oh, police wanting to mow down a group of peaceful (or not so peaceful) protestors? I'm sure if this isn't vaporware that the Defense Dept. and several police departments would love to get their grimy hands on it.
flame speaker (Score:2)
EM Pulse (Score:1)
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All they had to do was reverse the polarity!
It's so simple!
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Now, if they'd only re-routed power through the deflector dish...
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