Is a lighter effective because it’s on fire? Or just because it’s hot?
If you made a lighter that was just as hot as another lighter, would it work just as well even if it had no fire?
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Lots of people are mentioning old electric car lighters, but not why things burn. The answer is the fire triangle, which just means you need 3 factors: fuel, oxidizer, and heat. Oxygen is obviously the most common oxidizer (hence the name) and basically everywhere in the atmosphere. And any substance that undergoes a sufficiently exothermic reaction will produce enough heat to propagate that oxidation as a chain reaction (i.e. fire) once enough heat is present to start it.
Not all fuels are equal. Ones that burn slowly will smoulder, while the ones that burn extremely fast explode. Too many unintended and destructive fires occur because people don’t realize when fuel sources are susceptible to heat (even a tiny spark), such as dust in a grain silo, a pile of oily rags, or even a compost heap (which builds up heat due to bacteria breaking down the contents).
But yes, back to the point, lighters just need to create heat because presumably you already have fuel and oxygen available.
Farenheit 451 is a reference to the autoignition temperature of paper. It’s a flameless ignition. Fire isn’t necessary, just really good at concentrating very high temperature gases into the thing you want to burn. Another good visualization of the fire triangle is burning wood in a campfire vs in a kiln to make coal. By keeping away most fresh air in a kiln, the wood burns differently - higher temps, less material consumption, and the flames only appear at the openings. That’s useful for metal melting
I’ve lit incense using an electric stove. Also I have a lighter that uses an electric arc
My lighter uses an electric arc, great for cigarettes, doesn’t seem to like weed as much.
I’ve wondered about those for camping. I can see how the electric arc would be perfect where you have something like an edge of paper, but I did wonder if it would still be effective with other fuels.
So intrusive thoughts won while I was in the bathroom and I grabbed a square of toilet paper. Boy oh boy will it light paper on fire.
😬
I haven’t tried setting paper on fire directly, to be honest. Being that it’s so hot but also a localized heat I suspect it might be hard to get flames from, just embers.
I figured it prob won’t like bowls but I assume joints are fine?
I think it’s the more uneven burn. It’s got an articulating neck type thing so it’ll get into a bowl just fine it just doesn’t want to light it, and joints it just kinda fucks up the end and maybe gets a half-assed light.
That’s so sad 😢
Burning is a chemical reaction which requires relatively much activation energy to start, but then produces enough energy to keep activating (i.e. sustaining) itself.
You just need to deliver enough activation energy to a given point on the material, which you can do with a flame, but also for example an electric spark, a glowing metal or a magnifying glass under sunlight.
You can also put the entire flammable material into an electric oven and slowly turn up the heat, until you reach this temperature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoignition_temperature
Depends on what you want to use the lighter for. People mentioned car lighters that work with just heat, but if you just want to light a gas stove, than a spark is enough. There are lighters that do just that, or you can even use an emptied regular lighter.
The flints you get for “primitive technology” camping are great for lighting gas flames - just scrape them to make a load of sparks
Fire is just the result of a self sustaining exothermic reaction - there’s no inherent “fireness” that makes heat from a fire different from all other heat sources.
Cars have (or had, I don’t know if they’re still included) an electric lighter that you pushed in to heat up. It was basically a little metal ring that got really hot. So I think it probably is the heat.
I remember my friend also had a plasma lighter, that unsurprisingly used plasma to light things. It made a really scary noise in the wind and hurt like a motherfucker to touch. We were 18 and dumb.
It’s the heat and no, cars don’t come with lighters anymore. The power sockets are still there but they even come with warning labels to not try use a lighter in them. No idea what happens if you try.
Itll melt the plastic around the socket as they arent designed to tolerate heat anymore.
That seems really dumb
Smoking is dumber
My car seems to be from the transition period, it has a lighter but no ash trays in the front, only in the back.
I guess it’s fine for the kids to smoke while watching the in built DVD players but not the driver and front passenger /s
There may have been an accessory package available that gave you a cup-shaped ashtray to put in the cupholder
Fire is a chemical reaction. Oily rags and compost can self combust.
Also, earth is the only known planet where fire can burn.
