Gravity defying smoke
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- čas přidán 28. 03. 2022
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Backflow Incense burners really confuse me, but I think I've figured out why the smoke falls instead of rises.
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Maybe you could burn some incense to mask the smell?
Early hot air balloonists thought it was the smoke that gave them lift. All demonstrations of the effect were done over fires.
In the home, with a paper bag held into the smoke, it would rise & hit the ceiling. Letting the smoke out in an obvious fashion the bag would fall.
So the Montgolfiers flew using the smokiest of fires made from straw, humidified wool & even old shoes!
The denser the smoke the better!
It wasn't until later that people realised it was hot air, not smoke, that gave you lift!
@@Aengus42 interesting!
@@SteveMould the algorithm suggested (regularly) a good video, it knew exactly what I wanted to watch & like - How?
Spoiler - because I've already watched both suggestions, liked both, & had the algorithm suggest them multiple times.
If you make a drinking straw sized tube of paper and hold it at an angle, and then light the top end. The smoke wil come out of the lower end falling.
You are to things what Tom Scott is to places. You find things, explain what makes them interesting, then explain how they work, Tom goes to places, explains why they are interesting and how they work.
Well said!
I'm always ready for them, they're so consistently good that even if they title a video "Reading the Terms of Service" I'd be SO READY AND EXCITED!!!
Nice try, Tom Scott.
And instead of a red shirt, there's a red pipe!
Stop smoking so much :p
Tom Scott weirds me out
Incense “smoke” is not just suspended ash from combustion.
Incense contains a lot of oils and the combustion is incomplete. Note the brown droplets of oil on the glass from the cross section. The smoke is so much heavier out the bottom because it’s mostly uncombusted oil in suspension.
If you were to trap and analyze the smoke from above vs below, you’d find a very different oil content ratio.
That might be true, but I doubt the post-it note has a significant oil content so that's likely not an important part of the effect.
you can also see the (what i suspect to be) oil condensating on the glass that the candle half is pressed against.
@@Manoplian Paper is not just wood pulp, there’s a binder component which is combustible and liquifies before burning.
“Heavy smoke” in general is a suspension of unburned fuel. You can light it and it will readily burn in most cases.
I'm guessing the oil/smoke contains some big heavy terpenes too
You can make a smokefall from burning paper. Does the same logic apply?
I’m in the fire service and we do a lot of fire science and learning about fire phenomena. The first thing we learn is all about pyrolysis. It’s a really interesting subject. For example, when any material reaches a certain temperature, it breaks the material down and the chemicals are released into the atmosphere which is, like you said, the flame part. Once this is gone you are essentially left with coal (assuming it’s wood that’s burning) and that will just glow because the gasses are burnt off. We sometimes come out of training runs and our fire kit is pyrolising. Within our initial course the light a fire with lots of timber sheets, they lay out a small section of carpet about 3 meters away and have 2 cups, one empty and one half full of water. Empty cup melts and half full one melts down to the waterlevel (this is to show how much water can absorb the heat) the carpet starts to release nasty looking gasses whilst curling up around the edges, after a while this carpet just bursts into flames even though there is a few meters separation.
A good demonstration is to heat up small bits off wood within a glass jar above a Bunsen burner (attach a tube to jar to allow the steam and gasses to exit away from the flame) at first you will get water droplets and then the smoke will come out white where it has a slight moisture content, this will then turn brown/green and this will be the flammable gasses. Once the process is over, the original wooden pieces are now just bits of coal ready for the BBQ.
This would be a really cool video and you can then demonstrate flashovers and backdraughts.
So, pardon me if this is a silly question, but is this coal, like, actual coal? I’d love to know how wood can turn into that. Or is it more briquettes that you’re making?
I also definitely agree about backdrafts. Probably the only thing Hollywood gets wrong because it’s more spectacular in real life, not less.
@@uzaiyaro He means charcoal rather than actual coal
PSA: Pyrolizing wood produces a lot of carbon monoxide, so do this outside, and try to burn off the gas being produced if possible.
dude! this is so cool! i'd love to see steve do a video on this!
@@uzaiyaro sorry, this is to make charcoal. The briquette are, I assume, made in a similar way but with a manufactured wood beforehand. Like moulded sawdust? I’m only assuming on how they made.
I used to do nosework with my dogs, which is a sport where the dog is supposed to pinpoint the source of a specific smell. When you get into that, you learn all kinds of surprising things about how and where air travels within a room (since it affects how the smell travels and how/whether the dog can interpret it). In some of the seminars, we used "smoke pencils" or "smoke pens" to explore what airflow does next to doors, in sunny spots, next to corners, etc. That's what these smoke experiments reminded me of.
"Sorry it's a really bad line" dad jokes on point, Steve, proud of you :)
I think I took mental damage from that joke. The dad joke force is strong with him.
Paused and came here to like this :D
I still don't like discord, but I had to wind back just to see that again
It got me good 😂
4:40
About the Mexican wave, or as we call it in the US simply the wave, I've seen a situation where there were two waves in the audience moving towards each other. I was genuinely tickled to see that the waves canceled each other out when they met.
Yes, in the US it's just the wave. Cancelling waveforms is how our noise cancelling headphones work
Or in Mexico where it's known as, "the wave."
@@gdemrakul2824 113 people who upvoted the original comment care.
@@DampActionRC I'm sorry, I replied to the wrong comment (I intended to reply to an irrelevant comment in this same video). I hope you accept my apologies. This effect you're talking about seems pretty cool. Maybe somebody caught it on camera so we could all see?
Done with steve mould as a result of this. Must RACE be a part of ALL things descibed by those from there? Gonna do the old english swipe left
The misnomer Mexican Wave amuses me. It was invented in America, and from here reached our neighbor Mexico where it was seen on global television at the World Cup, so the rest of the world associated it with Mexico.
In America, we just call it "the wave." I don't know what they call it in Mexico.
The wave
I had honestly never heard it called “a Mexican wave”. Thank you for explaining what was going on
Brazil nuts.
Ah, I was confused about it being called that too since I've always known it as the wave. This makes sense though.
In Mexico it's called "La Ola" or "La Ola de Estadio" if you aren't into the whole brevity thing.
This channel is freaking amazing. I love that it's never "and that's just how it works" - there's always "but there's something that didn't make sense..." followed by more digging. This is an approach and attitude that we need more of in society - never assuming that we know everything there is to know about a subject, being aware that there is always something more going on that we haven't figured out yet.
I have been thinking about this topic recently so thank you for this video - I'm a blacksmith and when I fire up my forge, often times smoke from the coals will cling to the horizontal forge table before very slowly starting to rise (or settling I guess). I figured it was due to the steel table cooling the smoke before it had a chance to rise. It looks quite surreal. This video makes me think that my case, the convection probably doesn't get to pull all the smoke up with it; as the smoke is forced out of the coal mound to all sides, it ends up too far away from the convection stream to get pulled up, and it gets cooled by the table and simply lingers for minutes.
Do you happen to have any video of that on your channel? It sounds interesting
@@Spiker985Studios I don't but I have been trying to capture it. It doesn't happen nearly as much in warmer spring weather as it does in winter
My own hypothesis is that it works similar to underwater brine pools. Some conditions allow the smoke containing air to get unusually super saturated and so denser, but also somewhat stable so once it meets normal air with its normal concentrations the two gas masses don't mix as easily/fast as they otherwise would.
My friend was showing me one of these a few weeks ago, and it absolutely blew my mind + had me completely stumped as to how it works. I'm so grateful for this explanation 😬
This was very interesting! I especially liked the comparison with crowds exhibiting fluid like behaviour.
This made me think of the terrifying scenario of crowd surges that often cause hell incarnate (eg crush injuries in festivals or a nightclub) but can be modelled fairly accurately with fluid dynamics. I didn’t expect to think about that so thank you for another great video!
That's awesome! We always had neat incense burners at the local flea market, but I've never seen one that had a smoke waterfall! It's usually Grim Reapers and Dragons with smoking mouths and eye holes.
I have one that is a tree with a face in it. The smoke rolls out of its mouth
I got one that's like a mini pond with a water feature, the smoke fills the "pond" which has two koi fish in it.
Once again Steve, always with these interesting science topics.
I believe he gave credit in the end to someone else for the topic.
Something i remember as a child is smoke from the chimney falling when there was a snow storm on the way. It was explained to me that the high pressure front of the storm forced the smoke down low.
don't storms typically have *low*-pressure fronts?
@@purplezart that would actually explain better the phenomenon, less pressure equals less air thus the capacity of it to suspend any particles would be diminished
It was just how it was explained to me as a kid. Not sure if it was right or not but i can tell you it almost always happened before a storm.
So im assuming its more like when a fire is just being lit or is small? but when its significantly colder outside and the flue/ chimney is cold once a fire is lit it can create a backdraft causing the cold air to sink in to the chimney, partly the reason for they flue so you can close it when not in use and if you ever noticed on cold days there can be a significant flow of cold air from a chimney if you don't have that shut. Will also cause the smoke when lighting up a fire to just gointo the room instead of out the chimney until it gets warm enough and enough upward heat and airflow to create a flow up and out. Its called the stack effect just as an FYI but as a side note something that's not commonly known is that when there are large atmosphereic pressure changes like storms it can also cause a net flow in or out of cave systems or underground tunnels.
@@connorjohnson4402 absolutely this.
It’s about fighting the cold dense air sitting on top of the chimney, like the upside down version of putting your finger on the end of a straw and into water.
We would have issues starting our fireplace if it was below 10°F outside. It would take quite a while for the heat (and annoyingly smoke) to find their way up and out.
Fire being the special case is a really interesting insight. Thank you for the great video
This is exactly what I was looking for. I want to make Backflow cones out of my regular cones and didn't know how far to drill the hole thank you for this video!
I've needed this video since Christmas when my dad got one of those! Thank you so much for explaining!
The post-it note example reminded me of years ago when I was a smoker. Break the butt off of an unburnt cigarette. Pull the cotton out of the paper of the butt. Then take the cellophane that's around the bottom of the cardboard box they come in. Turn the square shaped cellophane upside down and set it on a flat surface. Twist the butt paper into a thin paper tube. Light one end of that paper tube. Use the lit paper to burn a tiny hole in the top of the short side of the cellophane. Then turn the burning paper tube around and stick the unlit end into the hole you just made and let it burn. The smoke will flow from the paper tube to the inside of the cellophane and fall downwards just like the post-it.
I have a theory that maybe Steve knows about the cigarette trick and came up with the post-it trick because he didn't want to make cigarettes look cool which is a great thing. Don't smoke, kids.
As my niece would say... 'Eeuw!'
As people say smoking is harmful to you and people around you too.
Breathing in smoke but not smoking yourself is know as secondhand/passive smoking.
You can still get all the horrible diseases from regular smoking as well as secondhand/passive smoking.
Huh, I used to smoke but I've never heard of that!
I came to see if anyone knew about this besides me, but I can go one step further, if you'll leave the cellophane on the pack you can pull up down to increase the flow rate.
2:34 I have never rolled my eyes harder than hearing "for a fixed smoke flux..."
I absolutely love how along the way of learning about this cool new trinket I now want, I also learned two very cool things about smoke and burning, how the way we conceptualize them is only due to circumstance. Amazing insights!
I love thinking about things in completely new ways and you do a fantastic job at bringing that out!
So many forces at work to make such a simple looking piece of art. Love it!!
The questions we didn't know we needed answered!
Steve you killed me with "it's a really bad line" your humor is spot on XD
Is there an upper limit on the size of smoke fall devices? It'll work on incense cones or rolled post-it notes, but what about something like a log with a hollowed core?
As the hole diameter becomes bigger, it will sustain convection currents more easily. Read about the Kaprun disaster.
hawk 7886, I've seen it happening with small logs too that had a hole or a crack. don't know about bigger ones, I just don't have enough experience with it
Your comment reminded me of this experience I had:
I remember where I almost saw this phenomenon: it happened whilst I was burning a heap of bamboo stalks!
I simply chucked them in a fire, only to be spooked soon thereafter by literal wooden bombs as the pressure inside the sealed cavities made the stalks burst vigorously.
So, for the next batch, I poked holes throughout the pieces which had sealed cavities, basically creating a long tube of very oily wood.
While burning, which wasn't easy at all, lots of dense white smoke oozed lazily out of the top, barely rising; I'm sure that, had I lifted the cane out of the fire, I'd have witnessed a smokefall out of its bottom!
@@SugoDiGatto Hmm... bamboo bombs in a campfire, you say? (Off to the lair!)
A glass bottle with a couple small holes in the bottom will allow this effect with an incense stick, but will stain the surface it's on.
This was described to me by a science teacher as creating a small vacuum or low pressure zone, where air is moving up but the smoke gets thick enough in the zone and so heavy enough to fall.
Very good 🙂
I've never seen the excitability of bubbles quite so clearly, but I DO love watching the activation of those sodium acetate heat packs, and now I know what to call them!
We have one of these and, today, I discovered something else weird about these incense cones. Try placing one on a flat-based candle holder (as used for ball candles, for example). When I did this today, I discovered that the smoke simply pools at the base of the cone. I've also noticed something about the smoke generated by these cones that may play into the physics - it seems to be much more oily than you'd expect (judging by the residues on our 'waterfall' burner) - which may play into the speed at which it cools down, as well as providing a greater density when suspended.
Fascinating stuff - good work.
Perfect timing. One of my friends just gave me one of these as a gift and I've been wondering myself. I love it!
Thanks for yet another great video! Maybe an idea for a future video: I have been wondering how blades cut on the molecular level. I.e. a very sharp blade does not need much force at all to separate a material, is there any particular molecular/atomic level interaction between the blade and the material being cut? Does the blade just wedge itself in between the target material atoms mechanically pushing them apart, or is there more to it than that?
Here's another question for you: what causes the regular "puff-puff-puff" pattern of smoke coming out at 5:20?
Cool video! I've been wanting one of these things for a while, haha.
"puff-puff-puff" is the most perfect and concise way to explain this lol
Few days ago I asked myself similar questions, thank you for deepening topic.
Great video. Thanks. Have seen those waterfall incense burners around but, couldn't imagine they actually worked. They actually look pretty cool too.
7:40 Don't say it Don't say it Don't say it Don't say it Don't say it Don't say it Don't say it Don't say it Don't say it Don't say it Don't say it Don't say it!
Very cool video. These things kinda confused me so I was quite happy to see you tackled the explanation o f how this effect happens. Thank you for the video.
I literally just saw one of these for the first time a week ago and had no idea what it was. Thanks for the video!
I had wondered how these work for a while. I had assumed they had to be cooled down in a refridgerator or they had an ice cube inside. Thanks for the explanation.
Fluid Dynamics always freaks me out.
It is easily one of the most complicated fields of mechanics;
even the _simplified models_ are hard to work with a lot of the time, and involve a lot of Navier-Stokes equations and things like that.
I remember learning to make a smoke waterfall with..... Smokable products.... just by pooling the smoke in my mouth and pushing it out slowly. it always blew my mind. Thanks for showing me how it works!
I learned how to make a smoke fall by rolling up the paper and tin foil from the inside of a cigarette pack then slipping the cellophane up on the pack so that the pack is only half in it cellophane burning a tiny hole in the cellophane and placing the role of tin foil and paper in the hole and lighting it...
I learned this trick in the 80s...
This is the first I've seen anybody try to give any kind of scientific breakdown of it.
Awesome job, thanx.
Also I didn't know they made incent burners that use that and I burn a lot of incense... this is an amazing find to me.
Never seen one of these before but they do look really cool. Now I want one myself.
Today I learned: In the UK, "the wave" is called "a Mexican wave."
In Germany, it's _La Ola_
@@andrebartels1690 I am guessing that nobody ever says, "eine Mexikanische ola"
Which is a bit funny because it started at the University of Washington... in Seattle
We also call it “the wave” in Canada
It was invented in mexico where its called “la ola” which means the wave in spanish
I have been wondering about this for a while! I love my backflow incense burner. It's such a pretty and serene thing
I liked this video so much I ordered 2 burners. Thanks Steve.
Weird, I just randomly came across these incense burners on Amazon the other day. I think it was the first time I’ve ever seen them, that I can remember anyways. I just assumed the ceramic burner had to be placed in the freezer prior to burning in order to cool the smoke to the point it would descend down instead of rise
Great video! As always (in my extremely biased opinion), the more fluid dynamics videos the better. This whole exercise feels exactly like the kind of thing we'd get as a homework question for my Convection class during grad school fluid dynamics... so much so that I am really tempted to dig out my notes and textbook from that class, which is an expert example of nerd-sniping, so well done I guess. Anyways, I definitely agree that entrainment is the core reason why it "sometimes falls and sometimes doesn't fall". The combustion is heating the air around it, setting up a free convection flow due to the density differences, which then entrains air around it to flow too due to shear setup by viscosity. The area of effect around the plume of this entrainment acts in some ways similar to a boundary layer, at least insofar as the effect obviously diminishes with increased distance, though I can't remember what shape that "boundary layer like" entrainment takes, or if it follows the same sort of parabolic or log-law behavior as a normal boundary layer. (To get the plume shape I think you need to know both the momentum and thermal boundary layers and I think I remember that if you use a boussinesq approximation to simplify N-S you can analytically derive the thermal boundary layer profile, and that it is steeper than the momentum boundary layer). Anyways, get the tracer (i.e. smoke particles) far enough away and they won't be entrained. Or you can just block the flow communication entirely with a giant acrylic enclosure, which works too. I am sure there are dozens of fascinating CFD and flow visualization papers out there on this topic which can show in beautiful detail exactly what is happening (partly because buoyancy driven flows and free convection are fundamentally important in tons of applications, but mostly because buoyancy driven flows almost universally make stunningly gorgeous CFD or flow-vis videos).
Just love your channel always such an interesting watch!
I really appreciated that, "a lot of smoke is coming out of the top; it's just moving faster, because of convection, so it's harder to see." was reiterated into "for a fixed smoke flux a stream of smoke moving faster must be less dense."
I once saw this effect with a lollipop stick, or possibly a q-tip that had had the cotton pulled off, when I was a kid. I have no idea anymore why it was set on fire, but because the paper was rolled so tightly into a solid tube, the inner hole was very narrow and the smoke came out the other end in a jet rather than falling out like a liquid. It was cool enough for me to remember it even now. Unfortunately, they don't seem to make those out of paper anymore, it's all plastic, so even though I've thought about recreating it several times, I've never been able to. Although it's not like I am constantly buying lollipops to see what their sticks are made out of, so maybe they are still around somewhere.
Paper lollipop sticks are still around for sure
Expanding on your notes around 7:15:
Smoke is flammable, for the reasons which you gave here. If one were to collect a bunch of smoke and introduce a flame to it (in a mixture of oxygen), then the smoke would ignite. That is why smoldering fires produce a lot of smoke but firey fires do not, I think.
He literally gave reasons why the incense smoke is not (so easily) flammable.
You seem to be talking about other kinds of smoke (smoke from recently extinguished candle) and thinking it applies to all smoke, and not listening to what Steve is saying really.
@@u1zha who asked
Great video as always, btw I think the convection still happens inside the tube but its forced to compress and go out, cooling along the way and getting dense .
thanks for this video. i bought one of these for my wife and ive found it fascinating that they managed to get what i thought was hot smoke to fall
Kudos on your incense cutting skills, them blighters are so fragile 😆
4:14 "Ryan *Cummings"*
**insert dank trollface**
Interesting fire moment I had recently: I had an overgrown ditch (steep grade) connected to a lawn that gets mowed. There was a mat of dried grass across the face of the ditch, and when I lit the righthand edge, the fire slowly crept across sideways, like a giant incense stick, until it reached the left hand edge, but the fire never moved into the mowed lawn, because there was no fuel, no mat of dried grass. Reminded me of the Forest Service’s clearcut lines that act as firebreaks, helping prevent widespread forest fires.
Thats the first time I'm truly tempted to do patreon for those live Q&A
I’d love to know where you can get such beautiful „smokefall ceramics“ as shown in the video 🤔
Just search for "backflow incense burners"
Any place that sells home decor should have them
Wait this was actually really cool. It’s crazy how we don’t question common but incredible phenomena like this 😅
Weird thing is... I feel like this entire episode is a promotional commercial on Back-flow incense burners. lol I've never heard of these until now and now I want one!!!
I didn't even know these were a thing and I'm now learning more about them than I ever thought I would
I used to do this as a little boy with printer paper. I still think smoke and fire are the most captivating thing.
Smoke gases are mainly H2O ( lighter than air), and CO2 (heavier), The visible parts are droplets and solid matter (heavier). Smoke cones evaporate a lot of oil, so the mix is potentially quite heavy.
How is water lighter than air and carbon dioxide heavier? Did you mean CO?
@@nerfherder4284 it's quite easy to estimate density of gases, it's proportional to their molecular mass. so, for water it's 18, for CO2 it's 44. average molecular mass of everything that air consists of, is about 29. therefore, water in gas form is lighter than air while CO2 is heavier. CO (28) has almost the same density as air
Why doesn't the oil ignite?
@@nerfherder4284 I know it's counter intuitive, but gas densities are proportional to molecular weight (each molecule claims the same amount of space in an ideal gas). O2 and N2 are 32 and 28 respectively . H2O, being an oxygen with two very light H, is 18. CO2 is 46. The whole thing is valid for H2O as a true gas; as soon as it condenses things change, obviously. Condensing water makes white smoke. I suspect the bluish smoke of incense is mostly essential oils. Air can carry quite a bit of water in mixture before it starts to condense out.
As a sailplane pilot you know everything about water being light; it's the main driver of stable thermals.
@@fewwiggle High flash point.
Thank you for pointing out the pomegranate juice... I was watching it thinking it was a complex chemical reaction in lab glassware, as soon as you mentioned it I could see the Pom bottle.
Loved the podcast btw, MORE MOULD!
Thanks for the video - but Michael Faraday covered much of this - brilliantly - in his Ri Xmas Lectures on the Chemical History of the candle in 1848 (yes - nearly 175 years ago). His book on the lectures is in the public domain, and various people have tried to recreate his demonstrations on video (some are quite tricky to set up).
I have a copy! Of the 1926 printing.
Thanks for your reply but many people are unaware of M. Faraday's lectures, and he isn't around to demonstrate it!
@@agimasoschandir It’s sad that many people are unaware of Michael Faraday - and particularly the Christmas Lectures for young people that he established in 1825 whilst he was director of the Royal Institution. He is one of my science heroes. This year marks the 200th anniversary of his invention/discovery of the electric motor. The Xmas lecture series is still going strong, and they have been broadcast on television since 1936 - so are probably the earliest (and longest running) science programmes on television. Various people have repeated his lectures and demonstrations (some are quite tricky to set up, and others would be considered downright dangerous today). A quick search on your favourite search engine will reveal videos of them - and the Ri’s own channel has videos of many of the televised lectures (well worth exploring).
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How can one find a verifiable financial Advisor , I buy the idea of employing the services of one.
Great! Got it.
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you just unexpectedly explained what fire is. god bless you!
That “really bad line” joke was seriously the best joke I’ve heard in a long time. Brilliant, mate!
Can you fill a bottle with smoke and seal it? Will it stay in there forever if properly sealed? Could you create a "smoke globe" this way?
My first intuition is that it would just settle in the bottom so it wouldn't look like smoke in the bottle
@@benstanfill363 yea but it cant settle forever right? At some point it would fill up?
@@Jmdeleeuw- The smoke particles won't stay in suspension forever. You'll end up with a bottle filled with air and soot on the bottom.
@@AileTheAlien and if you rattle it about it’ll what’ll happen?
@@jasperwong2970 many of the smoke particles as they contain oil would stick to the bottom of the glass. And the finer ones would probably stick on top. So I'm guessing most of it would remain on the bottom. Interesting experiment to try though
I wonder how many smokefall incense burners you just sold.
I'd like to buy one! I'm going to look it up on Amazon.
Another great explanation, thank you!!
Several things I hadn't considered before. Thanks very much. I'd imagine that the smoke falls because its not being caught up in the draft flow to the flames, partly because there aren't any flames, and partly because the smoke is released far enough from the combustion. As always, interesting stuff, told clearly, concisely, and with a sense of humor and wonder. I'll be back. 🙂
😮. Does this mean that it is possible to create torches that don’t create soot on the ceilings and walls?
Propane lights??? Led lights?
@@tatertott2390 sure but I mean actual torches lit with fire. Is it possible to engineer a torch “handle” so that the smokes goes down like this… that’s what I mean. Bc you know how torches leave black marks on walls and ceilings.
This is the first time I've ever heard of it being called a "Mexican Wave." Which I think is peculiar... cause I'm Mexican.
Comes from people outside the US & Canada associating it with when it was first seen globally during the 1986 World Cup in Mexico City.
@@johnmcgimpsey1825 you go into a science video and end up learning some history.
@@johnmcgimpsey1825 For those wondering, it's apparently just called "the wave" in North America
The world needs a video from you on Ball screws
This is very interesting. Thank you for sharing!
Fill a medium to large glass up with warm soapy water and shake it around while your hand covers the lid with a seal. You will find a significant amount of air pressure whooshing out when you remove your hand. Do the same thing without the soap and you will find that there is not any significant air pressure created. It seems to me that bubbles are able to create pressure through tensile forces in a way that I don't think has been fully detailed by physicists. I think this could have implications on the scale of the cosmos. I know this sounds asinine, but I hope you will humor me if you are running out of ideas for more videos.
I experience this effect when making smoothies in a blender. I like them without soap so it is probably just the temperature difference between the cup and the ingredients which leads to the air changing their temperature from the cup's temperature to the ingredients' temperature.
Pretty sure my videos prompted the invention of these things. I did a few videos on early CZcams about making smoke waterfalls with rolled sticky notes and these popped up a short time later. People used to do a similar thing as a cigarette trick but I think it was forgotten for a time between the 90's and early youtube.
if you were on CZcams in the 1800s then I'm inclined to believe you
@@ajazman7 If you know of these devices existing prior to 2013 tell me what to Google so I can learn about them. Far as I know that's the first time the sticky note trick took off on the internet, then a few years later I did a follow up video, followed by a channel called Giaco Whatever trying it with incense, and about a year after that they showed up on store shelves.
@@Nighthawkinlight The earliest patent of this thing I could find was CN201230066466.3 Patented 2012-03-20, Which the guy claimed he discovered it back in 2010. But I'm pretty sure I've seen something like this back in 2008 or 2009 at some random antique(and fakes) market in Luoyang, Henan. It's nice that you found this behaviour and posted a video about it, but there's only so much things to be found out by billions of human on earth. Claiming something to be your invention is a bold move and I respect that, cuz I've done things like this before and I still cringe till this day whenever I think about it.
@@solivictus1593 Nice find! Beat my video by a year then. Note I did not claim I invented these, I claimed to have probably inspired their invention. Proved me wrong there. At least I still have claim for inspiring the Eggzer/Golden Goose.
@@Nighthawkinlight I too once thought others' creation was inspired by my finding, and turns out they figured that out by themselves, and I wasn't even the first one who discovered the mechanic. There's just too many human on earth thinking at all times 🤣. Hard to say who inspired who or who came up with it first.
I got to this video through my watch later playlist (having previously marked it as something I wanted to watch), but when it started I for a moment thought that I was hearing the sounds of a of a Firefly documentary I also had queued. The incense burner looks very Inara, and the music is just about right for Firefly!
(Also, awesome video!)
Finally a video on one of these that isn’t weird clickbait advertisement from a dubiously legal source.
Well, I can tell you right away why it's so weird, smoke usually goes up.
exactly
I noticed the video didn't actually give a real answer but if you dig around in the comments you'll find one!!! 🤨
If you want to get into exploring convection currents, you might try setting up something for Schlieren photography/videography. Tons of fun and an excuse to purchase an expensive mirror!
I remember seeing this in a NightHawkInLight video almost a decade ago! Very cool effect.
I'm glad you mentioned that KiwiCo doesn't just do subscriptions. I've considered getting something like this as a gift for my nieces/nephews, but the subscription bit always turned me off. I'm sure the subscription is great, but I imagine after a while boxes of these stack up and become clutter.
A one-off box seems like a nice way to give them (and their parents) a taste of what KiwiCo has to offer, before committing to a monthly subscription.
This is great. The smolder/fire is an interesting set of stages. Thinking of how it builds with lump charcoal and grilling. Starts with a smolder, and then builds to a flame
When I was a kid we'd make them all the time with cigarette packets.
If you set a pack of smokes, lid down, and lift the bottom part of the plastic wrapping to create a square see through cellophane housing. Then we'd roll a piece of paper just like you did, use the burning tip to poke through the cellophane, leave it in, and watch the smoke fall.
I came looking for an explanation based on the principles of fluid and thermo dynamics, and you didn't disappoint. Very good lecture, so thank you for your research and presentation. Oh, before I go... it's said that the first sporting event wave ever documented occurred in Seattle, Washington at the Kingdome stadium, which was a completely circular structure, and the upper deck had varying rows of seats such that the absolute top row described an asymmetrical wave pattern as they went around the circle like a superposition of 2 waves of different frequencies to simulate an ocean wave architecturally using seating as it's medium. It was that pattern of seating that was the alleged inspiration behind 'The Wave', so it's not a 'Mexican Wave', but a 'Kingdome Wave' if there's any truth to the legend.
I lit a paper straw from a box I bought on fire at the top and the smoke poured out the bottom :O
It's amazing how you're making a video on the exact same thing I was thinking about :P
I had never heard of back flow incense burners and now I want one. lol
A thought I had while looking at this was that maybe the shape helped to compress the smoke a little bit so it would be more visible. Angling the outflow probably causes more of the smoke particles to bounce off of the sides of the tube. I would suspect that the one that flows out into the glass container is probably slightly narrower at the bottom to make the smoke more visible and then the glass keeps air currents in the room from immediately disrupting the effect. For the one with those petals on it, I think the shape of the petals themselves acts to further funnel the smoke into a smaller area and maintain its thickness relative to the smoke exiting from the top. I also wonder if the very fact that the top end is the one that's burning creates some kind of pressure phenomenon that draws the smoke down the inner part of the incense cone. Fascinating!
Great video and great information
Very cool! Always wondered about these.
I have one of these incense burners and it's really soothing to just watch with some soft music on, when I've had a stressful day. I've always wondered what causes it to work.
I love how Steve went out of his way to describe the Post-it note - the same size and shape of a cigarette, with smoke at one end and a flame at the other - as just a rolled up Post-it note with the diameter of a pencil.
5:51 this I used to do in front of the fireplace as a child.
I discovered when I rolled up pages of newspaper, the smoke would flow out the other end when I put the tip into the fire in the fireplace.
The smoke would then flow around until enough would accumulate and reach the flames where the gas would ignite causing the flame to travel to the opposite end of the newspaper tube.
Thanks for this! I wondered the same thing
I used to create smokefall's all the time when I was younger and smoked cigarettes' about 10 years ago.
I'd take a small, long, piece of a discarded cigarette box and roll it up really tight into a small paper tube, leaving just a small hole thru the roll. Then, I'd light one end on fire and blow it out to form a small tinder. Using that lit end, I'd make a small hole into the center-bottom cellophane wrapper still attached to the discarded pack of cigarettes, inserting the un-lit end of the paper tube into the small hole and upright. I'd then turn the whole assembly with the bottom of the box facing upwards, and slowly raise the delicate cellophane wrapper as it held the previously created paper tube, then stop just before it came off the box and watch as the smokefall hit the box and collected and the bottom of the pack of cigarettes.
They were always fun to watch and interact with.
Some people would see these and say, oh neat. And move on.
It's nice to know I'm not alone in exploring curiosities! Thanks for sharing, Steve!
The physics of these has been bugging me for years!!
Thank you!!!
I JUST ordered one of these for my daughter's birthday tomorrow!