Light My Fire

Fire is the rapid oxidation of a substance often with the evolution of heat and light in varying degrees of intensities.

Say what?

Fire is hot. Never gave it much thought beyond that. My mama just said, "No, no, don’t touch hot, hot."

I didn’t have to put my hand on a stove to get the message. I learned with mashed potatoes (aka: creamed potatoes, whipped potatoes, smashed potatoes) the connection between hot and pain.

What I didn’t know was that fire is just a chemical reaction and heat is just one of fire’s elements; light and smoke are the other two.

Every fire needs a fuel (something to burn), heat (to raise the temperature) and oxygen (breath for the fire).

Fire is like the Three Musketeers shouting – one for all and all for one. Take one of the three away and the Musketeer voices are silent. They are no more. The fire goes out.

OK, then, what does it take to light the fire? Perceptive question, and the answer may be surprising as we take a candle and look at wood.

If you have a candle handy, I’ll wait a moment while you light it.

Look closely at the wick; you can see it clearly because there is no flame around the wick. The flame is above it.

You’ll see the same thing if you look at a match or a piece of wood on fire. There is no fire on the wood. The flame doesn’t appear until it is a distance from the fuel.

A fire does not burn a piece of wood. That’s it; that’s the secret. What else do you want to know?

I understand. This revelation has left you speechless. So, how about what is burning if the wood isn’t burning?

Very astute question.

One match is worth a thousand words.

If wood is heated, it starts to give off gases. These gases have a temperature at which they ignite. When they ignite, Voila, we have fire. The hottest part glows blue closest to the wood and the cooler parts are yellow and orange.

Actually when the wood is giving off gas what is happening is the wood is decomposing or falling apart. Somewhat like growing old at an accelerated rate.

The first thing you see in a fire will be these gases mixed with unburned stuff in the form of smoke. When the temperature is high enough, the smoke starts to burn and disappears.

All of these glowing particles create the light we see through our smoke tears as we stumble around rubbing our eyes.

Smoke is lighter than air and as it rises it forces oxygen downward. That’s why in a house fire, one should always crawl and never stand up. There is nothing to breathe up there except smoke, which will kill you. Period.

After all the gases are released what is the stuff left in the fireplace?

Another sagacious question.

The black clumps are char, charcoal or pure carbon. It will burn, but there will be no smoke. The gray powdery stuff is ash, the unburnable minerals in the wood like calcium, potassium, magnesium, gymnasium and equilibrium.

Today fire is very portable and can be produced in a variety of ways at the moment needed. But this was not so when the hearth was the source of heat. The fire had to be preserved during the night.

The coals were raked together in a depression and covered with a curfew, which was a sheet of perforated metal with a long handle.

Drums or bells announced curfew at 7 p.m. at which time the embers were covered and lights extinguished making it very difficult for folks to gather and plot against the king.

Fires needed to be watched to ensure they continued to burn, but didn’t burn the house down. Thus, the keeper of the fire was appointed and wore a red hat. This was the beginning of a social organization known as the Shriners.

That Shriner part is not true, but the curfew part is true. Sounds very French to me. The spelling probably evolved from cover (covrir) the fire (feu).

Say it the way Inspector Clouseau would and he’s met his match.