Thread: Fire

What is fire? Its different than anything on this earth. Its not a solid, not a liquid, nor a gas. Its not physical, and cant be touched or felt. It isnt energy, it gives off energy. It contains lots of it, and lots of heat. You can feel its energy, but not it in itself. So, if it is not bound by normal laws, what is it?

As well, is it alive? It breathes, requires oxygen, produces and uses energy, needs to be fed.

Fire is facinating. What are your thoughts?

tbh, I was JUST thinking this myself not too long ago.

Perhaps to burn to ashes is to be completely transported to a different dimension/time... thus your matter is "burnt" to a crisp in the process. (answering the whole paradox... if I went back, would there be two me's etc.)

You'd immediately become the "you" in that time or something...

mind you, this is all just the workings of a philosophical mind un-hinged.

Fire is a reaction. Oxidation, to be specific. You can see fire because the breaking and reforming of bonds gives off a bunch of photons, hence why fires provide light.

Someone recently told me that fire was a 4th state of matter, "plasma". I guess he made it up. Dunno.

Originally Posted by ExoByte

As well, is it alive? It breathes, requires oxygen, produces and uses energy, needs to be fed.
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Fire does not respond to stimuli, does not technically reproduce and cannot be definably called an organism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living#...ion_by_Opinion

Here's a great resource:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/fire.htm

If you want to get technical, it can. Throw gas on the fire and you get a response. It also acts like a human, it spreads, it lingers for a bit until it uses up what sustains it, and moves on. So it may not be cellular, but it is different from anything in existance. It shows characteristics of being alive, while not technically being alive.

I don't think its plasma. Plasma is a whole other material that can actually be touched and felt as well. Plasmas also don't show the listed characteristics.

I don't think fire is anything that mystical; it's just a reaction, as Tsen said. There are plently other, more incomprehensible phenomena to discuss.

That's like saying ice reproduces when you put water in the freezer.

Originally Posted by Mark75

That's like saying ice reproduces when you put water in the freezer.
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Not really. Ice is formed when the water freezes, but its only bound to the water. Its just simply the water going from liquid to solid. Fire is neither, and fire is not bound to one type of material. To get ice, you need a liquid. Solids may freeze, but only if they have liquid traces on them. Again, fire is neither liquid, solid, or gas.

Originally Posted by Mark75

That's like saying ice reproduces when you put water in the freezer.
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It doesn't?! But water still dies and goes to heaven when it's hot outside...right?!

Fire is light and heat resulting from a chemical reaction. Nothing more. Fire forms when fuel and sufficient heat are combined with oxygen. To get fire, you need fuel, oxygen and heat. Matter may burn, but only if heat and oxygen are added. Again, fire is energy.

Fire forms when fuel and sufficient heat are combined with oxygen. To get fire, you need fuel, oxygen and heat. Matter may burn, but only if heat and oxygen are added.[/b]

Hence its need to be fed.

Again, fire is energy[/b]

Its not really energy itself, its just a lot of energy being given off. I know this, but fire is different than any other thing on this earth. Its the only thing that can be argued in the way I am arguing it now.

Just like I feed the ice with water? Maybe the reverse would be a better example. What if my water kept evaporating? Does that mean that I'd need to feed it more water to keep it alive?

The water never dissapears, it changes to moisture in the air, and returns. It doesn need to be upkept. Fire must be upkept to keep burning.

And I suppose that the energy that the fire is comes from nowhere and then disappears, right?

No, energy can't be destroyed. But the fire ceases to exist, the fire dies.

Much in the same way the puddle of water ceases to exist and my water dies.

The water never dissapears though, it goes into the air, and is rained back down. Fire however, the energy stays, but the flame is gone permanently. That fire isnt going to come back down from the sky.

What you aren't acknowledging is that the fire is composed of nothing more than that energy. Objects can be destroyed, which is what you're talking about. My puddle was destroyed. It no longer exists because it has changed into something that is not definably a puddle. In the same regard, the fire no longer exists because it has changed into something which is not definably a flame. The components that formed each still exist on their own, but no longer form the whole, the "object". Ergo, the object is destroyed in both cases. If it were somehow possible to collect the exact energy that produced the flame, we could in theory "put it back together". That's about as impossible as gathering the exact molecules of water that composed my puddle, although we could theoretically do the same in the instance of the puddle.

Originally Posted by Mark75

What you aren't acknowledging is that the fire is composed of nothing more than that energy. Objects can be destroyed, which is what you're talking about. My puddle was destroyed. It no longer exists because it has changed into something that is not definably a puddle. In the same regard, the fire no longer exists because it has changed into something which is not definably a flame. The components that formed each still exist on their own, but no longer form the whole, the "object". Ergo, the object is destroyed in both cases. If it were somehow possible to collect the exact energy that produced the flame, we could in theory "put it back together". That's about as impossible as gathering the exact molecules of water that composed my puddle, although we could theoretically do the same in the instance of the puddle.
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Okay, so the puddle turnsw into somethng that isn't difinably a puddle, what is it? A gas, H20 in it's gaseous isotope.

A fire goes out... and is no longer difinably fire... explain, dear sir, what IT becomes. After all, if you apply logic to one thing, you MUST apply it to the comparison.

wind is caused by pressure. (much the same as if you were to heat up the contents of a can of water, and slammed it down, upside down into cool water... it gives pressure and needs a place to go... wind = Oxygen Water = Hydrogen Di-Oxide fire = ? earth = carbon + minerals etc.)

so fire is NOT comparable to wind nor water, nor earth. It is a reaction, the thing is, we've only discovered that the reaction is good for heat. who knows what else it's good for.

Don't ALWAYS listen to rationale of the scientific community. It wouldn't be the first time the entire community was SURE they KNEW the answers asked, and were proven wrong.

Fire needs a trigger to exist however. You could collect all those things, but no, you would not be able to put it back together. It needs to be born. Just as a child needs the sperm from his/her father, fire needs something to create it. Water on the other hand, you can take those materials and compress them together and recreate the water as a whole.

Fire is an incandescent gas that arises from oxidation of certain materials. It isn't living although it has some of the characteristics of living things. Take this from a guy who has Pyro in his name

Water also needs a "trigger" to exist. It requires that two hydrogen atoms combine with one oxygen atom. And why could you not put it back together? If you reset the conditions, the fire would continue to burn. I don't know if you read that link I gave you (the second one), but it explains how a combustion reaction is self perpetuating. If all the prior conditions were recreated, the reaction and, inherently the flame, would continue.

You're right, though. Fire can be destroyed and created. Puddles can be destroyed and created. Chairs can be destroyed and created. That's because these things are neither matter nor energy, they are concepts. They are composed of matter and energy, but are not defined as the very matter and energy they are composed of.

Fire is literally invented by humans. "Fire" as a concept cannot be found in nature. This is not to say that fire does not exist. What it means is that fire is a human idea designed to refer to a very specific chemical reaction, but more accurately to describe the perceived heat and light that is characteristic of that reaction. Thus, fire is conceptually comparable to a puddle of water. Fire comes in and out of existence in the exact same way that a puddle or a chair does. It's components are reorganized in such a fashion that the concept no longer applies and is therefore no longer a chair or a puddle.

Furthermore, your analogy for fire responding to stimuli was poor. By the same logic, throwing a nail into acid and causing it to dissolve could be called feeding the dissolving if we threw more nails in. We could say that any such reaction is alive, which is simply not true.

Your definition of "being born" if I'm to extrapolate from your example, could apply to virtually anything. We all know how fire is "born" as it has been discussed in this thread and the link I provided. It's "born" of causing the proper chemical reaction to produce the light and heat in a way that we call it "fire" (I.e. assembling the proper components in such a way that the concept of a "fire" can describe them). Much the same as assembling scraps of wood in the proper shape will "give birth" to what we know as a "chair". No cell division has occurred, which is integral to defining what life is. In fact, we don't need any cells at all to have fire.

Life is a self perpetuating process. Fire lacks the capacity to create duplicates of itself. There is no objective way to say which fire is where, as we can only objectively say where any given energy that we perceive to be fire is, but even that is constantly moving and changing into something other than fire. We can certainly divide the burning objects and distance themselves from each other, but has a new fire really been created in this way? The answer is no. Since the energy that you perceive to be fire at any given instance will have changed into something that is not fire, but other energy would have moved into its place in the mean time. Ever notice how fire flickers and moves? That's because the energy is moving. The heat dissipates, the light escapes in all directions and is lost in the environment. This is relevant because the "fire" as a concept stays in one place. You can have more than one "fire" conceptually. But there is no objective way to measure where a "fire" is. It is merely a concept to describe the particular arrangement of energy, which is constantly changing and moving. We can measure how much heat and light is being given off, from where, and how far apart the reactions are occurring, but how do you actually say when one fire becomes another? If we take one fire, split the burning object in two, and add enough fule to make each half burn as big as the whole, that would be like cutting half of my dissolving nail off, moving it away and adding two more nail halves to each.

Lastly, fire does not grow. You can make a fire larger, but it does not grow in the same way that a living thing grows. Saying a fire grows because it's "bigger" is the same as saying my chair grows because I added more wood to it. Or that my dissolving is growing because I threw in more nails.

Science, taking the wonder out of the world since the 1500's.