That makes even better sense — the flare is when the accelerant gets eaten up, which happens rapidly? and then the subsequent flames are the fire eating up whatever else is there?
Again, basically, fire looks lively but is actually moribund? Or non-sustainable as people are lamentably inclined to say these days.
“Again, basically, fire looks lively but is actually moribund? Or non-sustainable as people are lamentably inclined to say these days.”
Sort of.
Fire is something that results from a chemical process. When Oxygen gets together with something that will combine readily with it, a couple of things happen:
1. You get heat
2. You get some light
This happens in chemical processes that result in a lower thermal energy state.
Right now, your body burns food. Oxygen is combined with the corn flakes (which is turned in to blood sugar) in your cells which result in waste heat and fuel your muscles use to move, etc.
That’s all ‘burning’ is - oxidation.
You can tell what’s burning by the color in a lot of cases. Cobalt burns blue. Copper burns green. Iron burns red. Guess what makes those fireworks on the 4th of July colorful?
So, instead of thinking of fire as burning, think of it as oxygen mixing with something ready to mix with it.
If you add fire (heat) to a piece of binder paper, it raises the temperature of the paper beyond 451 degrees, at which point the paper will sustain the chemical reaction of oxidation occurring in the paper.
Some fire burns without a flame (Indy car fuel, for example, burns so you can’t see it - believe me it burns just the same as any other fire). Some fire burns ‘cool’ (You can dip your hand in pure alcohol and light your hand on fire and it won’t burn. You can try this with someone elses $20 bill and it will burn the alcohol off without burning the bill.)
Some fire burns so slowly you can only see it over time. Visit any rusty swingset or gate - the iron in the gate is turning into Iron Oxide, or Oxidized Iron, or burned Iron.
As such, don’t be fooled by ‘fire’. Fire’s just something that results from certain kinds of oxidation processes.