OT: Oxygen catching fire?

Pouring LOX onto it would do. And very carefully from a long distance.

Various YouTube videos of people throwing LOX onto lit BBQs exist and the odd one of some muppet putting LOX and then lighting it. Some of the latter survived the resulting explosion give or take the odd limb.

Charcoal mixes surprisingly well with LOX.

Oxygen doesn't "assist" combustion, it actively participates in it and is consumed in the process. Others have pointed out about oxygen tents and fires, you should read up about the Apollo 1 capsule disaster - pure oxygen at atmospheric pressure. That just required a spark.

Don't ever breathe pure oxygen at atmospheric pressure either; you will damage your lungs.

If you want something worse than pure oxygen, try

I recall an experiment and air burning in gas. But I can't find many hits, this is the best I can find:

My old school chemistry book (Partington's text book of Inorganic Chemistry, 4th edition, 1933, and yes, I still have it, and very useful it is still, for the basics) has three diagrams along those lines. The first shows a flame of oxygen burning in an atmosphere of hydrogen; the second shows air burning in an atmosphere of coal gas, and the third of oxygen burning inside an annular coal gas flame.

Working at very high altitude observatories they keep oxygen on hand for anyone who passes out. Several are now in the dead zone where it is impossible to function properly without additional oxygen. The atmosphere is a lot thinner up there. ALMA is the most extreme 5km high.

I think we must have come across the same or similar book. I think mine might have been called "Parkers Inorganic Chemistry" of the same vintage BICBW. I can't remember the detail, just the principle.

Its the eternal triangle.

Oxygen, Fuel, Heat

Remove or quell any one to put out a (normal) fire.

I thought earth had a higher percentage of O2 than that during the dynosaur era ?. This might explain how they got so big yet could still physically move themselves.

When the Kings Cross fire occurred, the most deaths and injuries were caused by a fireball that shot up the escalator tunnel when the smoke above the flames caught fire.

I thing it was 35% during the times of wet and tropical rainforest that led to coal being laid down. At 35% even wet wood will burn.

Not a real problem for dinosaurs but it certainly influenced the maximum size of airborne insects whose respiration its truly diffusion limited.

I read that and was really surprised. It's been known for years

if that link works that some larger insects use their wingbeats to actively pump air into the muscles.

"In larger species the circulation of air in the primary tracheae is brought about by abdominal pumping and by thoracic volume changes which accompany each wing beat (thoracic pump)."

That paper is dated 1966...

Andy

Or perhaps one of the effects of hypoxia is that your eyesight begins to fail and everything begins to go dark. Taking a breath of oxygen restores your eyesight to normal.

Andy

Thomas Prufer

That is hydrocarbons burning in an oxygen atmosphere surely?

He does propane in air first then purges the lines with CO2 and loads it with a propane atmosphere and burns oxygen in it at about 5 mins in.

It burns hotter with a whiter flame and makes a different noise.

He wasn't able to get air to burn in propane though. Too much inert nitrogen in the oxygen fuel to make it sustain a flame.

I still think that is wrong. Has he managed to burn oxygen in oxygen? That would be conclusive.

I think your understanding of simple basic chemistry is zero.

You're entitled to your views but it doesn't alter the fact that oxygen doesn't burn.