Fun fact: "Keep your nose to the grindstone" comes from flour mills. When you were working fast, you had to keep your nose next to the grindstone to smell if the flour was getting too hot. Otherwise, the air in the room could explode. So "keep your nose to the grindstone" isn't telling you to work harder. It's telling you that if you're working hard, stay safe.
@@guytheincognito4186 Nope. "It's telling you that if you're working hard, stay safe." Read it again. "It's telling you that if you're working hard, you're staying safe" doesn't make sense for the context.
@@MiscBains Wrong. It literally states "So " _keep your nose to the grindstone_ " *isn't* telling you to *work harder* ". It's telling you that "if you're working hard, ... stay safe." End Quote. It's literally what it is. The grammar is incomplete. So it can either be "you're" as I put it or you can rephrase it "if you're working hard, *you'll* stay safe." Because it's referencing the flower igniting if you're not paying attention to it while it's on the stone. So I got the context perfectly fine thx.
@@guytheincognito4186 No. "Stay safe" is a command, with a you implied as the subject. Saying that you'll be safe because you're working hard is completely counter to the entire point of the original statement.
I remember my Industrial Safety teacher not shutting up about how surprisingly flammable seemingly harmless powders tend to be. He must have repeated it at least once a week while I took that class.
My dad carries "special" coins (basically just cool old ones that he likes the design of) in his pocket along with other little trinkets. Although, one time he forgot he put a mostly dead 9V battery in his pocket too. After awhile, he noticed a spot on his leg getting extra toasty but didn't really consider why. That is, until it burned a hole in his pocket while we were getting gas. The coin happened to touch both the nodes of the battery and conduct the remaining energy through it, superheating until the nylon in his pants melted. The strange point of heat happened again after he put his keys in his pocket. Eventually he decided to just remove the battery. 😂
My favorite fire starter in emergency situations is steel wool and a 9-volt battery. Technically any battery would work, but it's easier to work with batteries that have both terminals on the same side.
I work in a pastry factory and my job is to clean the flour that ends up coating everything since its pumped in from the silos under high pressure outside. I've always been paranoid of powder explosions but this video only consolidates that.
Have you seen or heard of the Imperial Sugar factory explosion? If not, the US CSB (Chemical Safety Board) has a video reviewing the incident in detail.
I'd show this video, hell, a whole compilation of powder explosion videos to ANYONE who thinks you're being too paranoid. It's not paranoia if they're really out to get you- and while there's no conspiracy at your job (or, well, there shouldn't be) the same principle applies.
That used to be a very real, serious risk in sawmills. It's largely why they soak the logs in water before they get sawn. Mythbusters confirmed this to be true, except they used powdered milk. The fireball was amazing
Another one I recently learned about (having not grown up in the country: Damp hay in a large pile or bale can catch fire, just sitting there "by itself"! The hay in the pile continues to respire, as plants do, and mold and bacteria start breaking it down, as they do. Both of these process create heat. If the temperature gets high enough, you have to start worrying about a barn fire. Because it will ignite itself.
We had mulch delivered last summer, big pile was dumped next to the garage. I was freshly shredded pine. It was hot. By the next day it was smoldering. All the neighbours were told to take some immediately as I tried to rake the pile down. The inside of the pile was just ash. We ended up with only half the mulch we wanted but at least the garage didn't burn down and the neighbours were happy.
@@lenabreijer1311 Yeah, anything that you'd put into a mulch pile or compost and such, you either need to rake around once a day or just keep an eye on before something like that happens. Heat from decomposition can cause big problems. Especially in summer.
Flour dust and the dust from handling wheat in general is a HUGE fire risk. Even to this day, old wooden grain elevators catch fire and burn to the ground in a matter of a couple hours if they don't outright explode ... actually watched one burn down in my Grandparents town one night. Lit up the night sky so bright the roosters all thought it was morning at 2AM.
@@Notmyname1593 Exactly same for big piles of straw (in France we call those big cylinders of straw "bottes") if it's not dry enough, bacteria in the centrer will thrive with oxygen, even if the stuff is compressed by machines, eventually rising the temperature to flashpoint. It happened this summer to a farmer near my grandma's house. Fire was not visible but it was smoking a lot, and passing by neighbors immediatly called firefighters
I am so glad I watched this- I use linseed oil to clean and condition my terracotta floor tiles AND I keep the cloths in a plastic bag with the container of linseed oil! Yup, definitely glad I watched this, thanks guys! x
I read about this fire risk of linseed oil somewhere years ago and never had a chance to use it but if the container of this oil does not have a big warning label by now I will probably miss the fine print.
Storing used linseed oil rags in a sealed container, such as a mason jar, will avoid this problem - any oxidation will deplete the oxygen levels in the container and slow the self heating. It is recommended that such storage not be in direct sunlight! (See glass)
CZcamsr called Torbjon is a blacksmith. He uses linseed oil to rust proof many of his items. He is always showing himself tossing the paper rags he uses with the linseed into his coal forge and makes a point to remind everyone to always burn those paper rags immediately after using. I never knew why until now.
I started enjoying the sun one morning and noticed light smoke coming from a plant stand, the new glass sphere water jug was burning a wood bench it had been set on. There was a long curved burn line from previous morning when it was placed on the bench, thankfully I managed to notice before it became a problem.
kinda bullcrap. the are many old german tales about mills creaking in the night. also mills dont really need light to work. since every mill was basically family project, its only bad constructed ones that had dust in the air. source: german miller
Pretty sure that’s only true by default. They never had night shifts before electricity. They didn’t have enough light, they didn’t have assembly lines. They also didn’t have enough people to create a demand for a second shift of flour makers. You keep grinding though Louis
Enough demand? Europe lived on bread! The Bread Makers Guilds were the original mafia because grain and bread were so valuable and so universally needed. The only countries that didn't have that were Nordic (because they lived off dried salted cod) and the Irish (potatoes - until the blight, of course).
In witchy stores, good employees tell their customers to ALWAYS cover their crystal ball. Not because of supernatural stuff, but because they start fires so easily!
Actually I once chipped my guitar pick and thought "I'm just gonna melt that edge off, so it's nice and smooth again" and that thing basically puffed into smoke instantly after getting close to the lighter
I've worked in the dust collection industry for a few years and one of the first lessons we learn is that common food items like sugar, flour, coffee creamer, etc are all explosive. Just do a big of digging, and you can find stories of entire factories being leveled due to dust explosions. There was one in Texas a number of years ago that saw a concrete grain silo cap that weighted approximately 8 tons thrown over 3 miles from the site after the dust went up.
Ping Pong balls burn out really fast (in a fun way)! My brother and I found this as kids randomly when trying to see what happens if you burn a cracked one :) So the hypothesis of flammable gas inside was definitely out. But we thought it was something similar to camphor (since the burn rate and flames were similar) - now I know it’s celluloid. Will try out guitar picks too
@@Ozzy4201 it's both. Celluloid is made from nitrocellulose and camphor. "Celluloids are a class of materials produced by mixing nitrocellulose and camphor, often with added dyes and other agents. Once much more common for its use as photographic film before the advent of safer methods, celluloid's common contemporary uses are table tennis balls, musical instruments, combs, office equipment, and guitar picks." Edit: oh they literally explain this in the video. Clearly you didn't watch it.
You forgot to mention one very important point about acetone. The vapor is heavier-than-air even when heated especially. That can cause even a little bit of acetone evaporating to sink down and run across the surface of say, a countertop to the flame and then ignite. It also means that if you use an open flame in order to help dry a project that you use paint on the Flames will rise up the ccolumn of acetone Vapor immediately
@@jennyjohn704 not so much drying it, but I've used a torch to heat steel up immediately before painting lots of times. When it's -10⁰c outside, you do what you have to
@@jennyjohn704 just because it isn't sensible doesn't mean it doesn't happen... also lots of things are an open flame that you wouldn't think about us being an open . Such as a tank Mount infrared propane heater. When operating properly you can't see the flame all you can feel its heat and because it's infrared and the tendency to cause a lot of evaporation from volitle organic compounds. And a lot of people use those style of heater in places that have no electricity or maybe are being prepared for renting thu's leading to the circumstances I just spoke about
Woodworker here that works with BLO (boiled linseed oil). . . It's harder than hell for it to catch fire unless you're an idiot and throw rags upon rags soaked with it into a pile with literally zero airflow. Most sites should have a sealed barrel to put rags covered in oil-based finishes. The sealed barrel keeps oxygen away so it stops oxidation as well as containing a flame just in case. For homeowners, don't wash oil-based finishes down the sink; they wreak havoc on water treatment equipment. Some also contain heavy metals (this is why you should wear gloves when applying oil-based finishes). Spread the rag out on the floor or on a towel drying rack. If you're super worried about it igniting, you can put a fan blowing on it to remove heat from the rag.
@@AC-cg4be many don't know that. I was polishing a bed head board...and got tired and put the rag down on a dresser and went and laid down to take a nap. Someone walked by and shut the drawer. A few minutes later my pup woke me up crying...the dresser drawer was on fire. SO don't tell me or anyone else it's 'harder than hell to catch fire....' Moronski.
@@athena8794 also learned that there's always at least 1 idiot at work that's dumb enough to let themselves be used as a human shield. Generally it's the same idiot that's Willing to stick their finger into a light socket to test if the powers out.
I have been surrounded by a ball of fire thanks to flour, it was almost like a bomb went off. I was just in the right spot and just the right amount of flour on me that I only walked away with just burnt hair. The speed of the burn was my savior at the end. People from about 2 blocks away came running and people close by ran away
Did something similar once! Had a bunch of very fine sawdust on my arms from polishing a few parts only for a tiny spark to erupt into flames across my forearms and chest but only the edges where it slowed down did it actually burn anything
As a painter who has linseed oil covered rags from me moving oil paints around the canvas I appreciate now being aware that I should probably keep an eye on my rags, drying pieces, and supplies more than I already do, thanks!
In advanced science in 8th grade, we simulated grain dust explosions, as earlier that summer, a grain elevator in our state went kaboom. Sugar is far more combustible than flour; we almost set the lab on fire. Fun times.
My family were once mill owners, before there was a spark and... well, the rest is history. Throughout history, mills have had a tendency for pyrotechnics. There are records as early as days of the Norman Conquest and as recently as only a few years ago in automated plants of explosions caused by sparks from grindstones. Flour is no joke!
Mill City Museum here in Minneapolis can attest to that. the (at the time) worlds largest mill was destroyed by a flour explosion and resultant fire. they have the ruins of the place still visible and it looks a bomb had gone off
Flour can be used as a fuel air bomb, its speculated through-out history that some mills and bakeries have met their fiery doom due to a cloud of flour catching fire.
@@alexandercanella4479 We know some for certain and some are speculation, it would be factually wrong to brand all unknown fires of bakeries and mills as such events.
The Imperial Sugar explosion. Several people were killed and the entire plant was destroyed. The building was mostly reinforced concrete. A few good videos on it.
Thanks to Mythbusters and highschool chemistry class I knew about all of these. Here are some more examples: - Dryer lint (countless drying fires are caused every year by neglecting to empty out the lint trap.) - Used 9-volt batteries (if thrown in the trash alongside combustible refuse residual sparks can cause trash fires.) - Lysol and other air fresheners. (There's a reason they're often used as makeshift flamethrowers in action movies.) - Styrofoam. (Same reason as ping-pong balls.) - Aluminum + iron rust (if given a spark, this can cause a self-oxidizing reaction that burns hot enough to melt through almost any material. It was one of the Mythbuster's favourite crazy things to work with for this reason. They used it to literally melt a car in half.)
@@hansisbrucker813 Yeah. Thermite typically contains a binder as well, so as to keep the mixture stable and homogeneous, but Aluminium + Iron Oxide + heat gives you a thermite reaction.
@@pyrodrayson3216 Yes, but if you've ever messed with it thermite is really freaking hard to ignite. Aluminum is self-stabilizing in that every bit of is is covered in a near monatomic layer of aluminum oxide, preventing the rest from reacting with anything. You need to get the thermite hot enough to melt the aluminum before it can come into contact with the iron oxide. A standard lighter isn't going to cut it, and a spark generally isn't long enough to melt it. Most of the time magnesium is used to light it, as that *can* be lit by more conventional means and burns hot enough to ignite the thermite. And it makes a nifty looking fuse, as well.
Great video! Something I wanted to point out is that fire requires 4 things, not 3, to happen. Oxygen, heat, fuel, and the chemical reaction. That's why we use a fire tetrahedron rather than a fire triangle these days when describing ways to extinguish fires. There are fire extinguishers that specifically disrupt the chemical reaction in order to put out fires, instead of trying to reduce heat or cut off oxygen like with water or CO2 respectively.
Technically it doesn't even need Oxygen. It needs an Oxidant. This distinction is important in many times of fire. For example a Magnesium Fire cannot be fought with Water as the reaction is strong enough that H2O will act as an Oxidant. In fact adding water makes the fire worse. Likewise certain really powerful Oxidants will allow you to burn fuel that under normal circumstances isn't even flammable, see Scishow's episode on 5 of the World's Most Dangerous Chemicals. I don't know WHY people don't talk about this more as the more I live as an adult the more often it seems to come up.
The same architect who designed the curved glass building that melted the plastic trim on cars in London, Rafael Vinoly, had the same problem with another building he designed, the Vidara hotel in LasVegas.
I worked at an outdoor glass sale once, where we kept having to shade or move the items out of the sun, because the paper carton things they were sitting on kept starting to smolder.
My high school chemistry teacher had us conduct an experiment with aluminum sulfate and ammonium nitrate. 1/4 gram of each, sifted together and then piled on a plate. We strung a length of detcord across the quad to it and lit the fuse. When the flame reached the powder, it went up in a 6' high mushroom cloud.
You want a fuel that sets itself on fire thats really weird? Hay bails can catch fire after getting wet! Believe it or not rain on hay in the paddock can cause it to catch fire
For anyone who doesn't know, hay can continue to respire for a significant time after it's harvested, as plants do, and bacteria and mould break it down, as they do. Both of these processes require water, and produce heat. Large enough bales with enough water (especially in summer when it's already hot) can easily push the hay above its flash point and then there's no putting it out. Keep your barn roof water-tight, or you might find your hayloft ablaze!
I have witnessed several neighbor's barns burn down due to this. Hay that's put away too wet, in large piles, can start to break down by bacteria action. This releases heat. In the middle of the pile, this can lead to runaway temperatures, with the bales first smelling of mold, then hot grass, then smoke, then bursting into flames when the pile is opened and air reaches the smoldering hay. Hay must be dry when put into storage!
One nasty self igniting all day thing is moist (not wet, just moist) cut grass or hey. In agriculture, this is a topic (microbial action is followed by chemical cellulose oxidation above 70 °C), producing quite some fires. Occasionally it also hits hobby gardeners, when grass cut is composted somewhere too close to ignitable things
My wife one night while I was taking a nap, she screwed up and it was bad. One of my kids had spilt some grease moving a skillet. I'm not sure if they tried to clean it or tried to hide that they made a mess. Well my wife always washes and puts the clean pots on the stove. So when she started cooking and the burner got hot enough, the grease caught fire. I woke up to the smoke alarm going off and as I was walking into the kitchen, my wife had a 5lb bag of flour and was in the motion of throwing it on the fire. I saw what she had and started screaming NOOO!!! But it is so hard to stop when you already started. I think we are all like that. The flower was like an explosion of fire and luckily I had a fire extinguisher next to the fridge. So I was able to put it out almost as fast as it started. I asked her what in the world was she doing? She said that the fire chief that lives next door had said the easiest way of putting a grease fire out. Is by a simple stuff that you have at the house already. She says that she remembers him saying flour!!! I told her, yes baby you probably did hear him say flour. She says you see even you agree. I said yeah I agree that he said NEVER USE FLOUR TO PUT A FIRE OUT!!! At 11pm she walked next door and woke that old man up to ask him about flour on a grease fire.... I was so embarrassed and trying so hard to apologize to him for her waking him up. She told him that she was not able to sleep until she knew that either she was right or if I was right. The fire chief just said, yeah never use flour to put any kind of fire out especially a grease fire. Flour becomes a fuel that will burn your house down before you can make a call or do anything. She asked him, what did you tell us to use then. He said Baking soda young lady baking soda. I just said thank you and turned to my wife and said, baby can we please go to bed now. The fire chief says yes baby, can I please go back to bed now. Lmao. That was it and the next time we went shopping my wife bought a big bucket and filled it with baking soda.
Damp hay/straw can catch on fire on its own. If you gather/bale it without it being dry enough, microorganisms will start breaking it down. The heat from this process is enough to make it catch on fire if it is stored semi-compactly. A lot of barns and haystacks have burned down due to this.
As a kid, I was play on the school's playground during summer vaction. They had been sanding down all the swear words on the wooden desk, at the school. The was a large barrel of sand down desk tops. We were playing with, just throwing it in the air. There is always one kid with a lighter, in any group of kids. While we were standing in cload of desk top, he lite up his lighter. It exploid. We wern't standing next to an explosion, but right in side one. Other then being deafen, it set our hair on fire. We we okay, but we took all the that sand desk top away. It was more the powdered wood, but whatever they sealed the wood with. That stuff wold exploid, if you stuck a match in it. I don't know how I didn't die that summer.
Celluloid is still used in some products. Some high end ballpoint pens have it. Many older products in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, had it. Lots of toys included celluloid. Celluloid also was/is still a common material used in making accordions. Celluloid is easy to mold over the frame and protect the instrument. It also helps seal up any small air leaks. However the plastic can eventually dry out and crack and yes, under certain circumstances, catch fire, just like any celluloid.
Putting oil in my car the other day, some dripped down the motor, onto the manifold, it flashed and caught fire.. I saved my car at a cost but I thought oil needed a naked flame.. Apparently, rust on my manifold reacted with the oil, turns out, engine oil can flash..
@@stevenbeach748 yeah, she was hell hot.. apparently it was the chemical reaction, rust on the manifold, oil and heat... I managed to smother it out with my shirt, skin off all my knuckles, burnt my hands, forearms... I've seen a car go up before and wondered how a little engine fire can engulf a car so quickly.. I learned a few things that day..
Saw a guy show how CoffeeMate could be set on fire: took a packet of CoffeeMate, poured it into his hand. Pulledacricket lighter out, said watch this. Tossed the CoffeeMate up and flicked the cricket. Made an orange flash, not very big and no noise and little smoke.
learned about celluloid flammability in high school when a friend was playing guitar by a bonfire and another friend was tired of it and tossed his pick in the fire
as one who used to play LARP, we used to use flour or even better Coco powder (for making hot chocolate) to make a flash of fire in the campfire. and as one who grew up on the country i have seen a fire caused by self igniting hay, it apparently where a bit wet when pressed and put on the loft and when it then starts rotting it gets hot, and can get hot enough to set it self on fire.
I've seen flour used in DIY pyrotechnics. I remember at a LARP, we did some kind of ritual and one of the steps was to grab a small handful of flour and throw it at a fire. It's really effective and showy. Just stay a few feet away because it gets surprisingly hot even if only for half a second.
I gotta tell you, these videos are easy to watch while drunk. The whole "I'm gonna tell things simple and quote the direct thing I say" helps it a lot.
1:50 Saying that the chemicals contain energetic bonds is the wrong way to think about it. The bonds TAKE energy to be broken, but after that more energy can be released by the formation of new bonds to oxygen.
Activation energy isn't the same as an exothermic reaction. Those bonds do contain potential chemical energy. The energy is released, as you said, through oxidation.
@@sigmasquadleader The bonds only 'contain' energy in the sense that there are bonds with even less energy that could be formed (like to oxygen). I prefer to think of it as the chemical as a whole containing that potential energy, or the atoms containing a lot of potential energy that has only been partially released by the present bonds. I agree that saying that the bonds contain potential energy can be valid and helpful, but I've seen many chemistry students make mistakes due to misunderstanding this concept. They can't grasp how to draw energy diagrams or orbital energies because they think that the breaking of the bond releases energy while the opposite is true.
Plenty of people have learned some of this the hard way when their decorative crystal balls, mirrors they use to do their makeup in front of a sunny window, or crystal sun catcher things light a fire. I wouldn't trust one of those beautiful crystal looking doorknobs either. Not in a sunny room.
8:52 It wasn't just ping pong balls. Billiard Balls were also made from celluloid, but this was discontinued rather quickly, as it was found that the Billiards had the tendency to explode when striking one another.
I use acetone for a few things. In this case, cleaning metal before welding. I forgot about the rag I had used and fwoosh, fireball LoL set my whole table on fire. Just one spark. Fortunately, my table is made out of steel.
@@seanpeacock4290 Acetone evaporating at room temp produces a pretty big cloud of heavier than air vapor, it will creep along surfaces, and when goes lights up a much bigger area than just where it was sitting.
Someone had a bottle of nail polish remover next to a candle, it randomly exploded into a fireball, burned their house down. They lived close to me but not too close, we didnt see it
Anyone who grew up in the Midwest ("corn-country") knows how explosive corn dust is. A detonating elevator during harvest is like a FAE was dropped in town!
That building in London is 20 Fenchurch Street, designed by Rafael Viñoly. He also designed a hotel in Las Vegas called Vdara *which does the same thing*! On particularly sunny days the pool area would get so hot it would melt plastic cups and some guests even reported smelling their hair starting to burn.
Do party fog machines have the same fire risk as flour? They basically suspend glycerin particles in the air, and isn't glycerin just another carbon-based flammable substance?
Until I got interested in woodworking, I had not realized HOW Dangerous wood stain products are. The rags can catch fire also if you leave them to dry as is. Spontaneous trash can and garage fires have happened many times
I looked at a home for sale last year that a large portion of the vinyl siding on one side of the house looked melted. I thought maybe the house next door had suffered a fire, but it turns out that a recently added window to that facing side was reflecting the sunlight onto the house I looked at
I take private lessons from Michael Angelo Batio, who used to literally melt his guitar picks due to his preternatural speed (if you don't know who he is, Google him...his playing is insane, and he can play with both hands on two different necks at the same time - crazy good - he also has a CZcams channel). Some of the best players in the world learned from him (Dimebag, Petrucci and Morello), so hopefully I'll be able to consider myself among them one day. He talks about melting his picks in one of his training videos from the 80s or 90s. Can't remember if it's Speed Kills or an earlier one.
I once did some automation work in a flour mill. The first order of business was a class about dust safety. It included a small demo exploding some flour. It does indeed go bang.
@@cjmiller511 Nitro lacquer is very thin though, and really only a hazard to itself when confronted with heat. There are people (Danish Pete once did this to a gold top Les Paul for an Anderton's video) who use heat guns and hair dryers to deliberately crack nitro finishes to make them look older than they are. An electric guitar is unlikely to be heated sufficiently to be in any danger, although acoustic guitars might be more susceptible because of their much greater surface-to-volume ratio.
I remember when I was a kid I drew up a bunch of "inventions" in a notebook. One of the drawings I made was like a sort of "self defense" fire cannon, and the design was a bunch of pencil shavings shoved into a paper towel roll, with a lighter taped to one end and a mouth piece on the other lol.
I’ve been keeping the ‘flour explodes’ fact in the back of my mind for years. I keep imagining a group of armed assassins tries to break into my house but I saw them coming, kicked on all the fans and shook bangs of flour everywhere. They walk in ready to shoot but then I tell them if they use the guns the entire place will explode, then it becomes a lot easier to fight them =*-*= at least it is in my fantasy 🤣
I never heard about linseed's oxidation properties before. That's crazy! Reminds me of straw balls that combust due to the heat generated by bacteria living in there.
Important note. Only "boiled linseed oil" dries quickly enough to produce enough heat to catch fire. Plain, unprocessed linseed oil takes a lot longer to dry. That being said, most linseed oil that an average person uses is boiled linseed oil.
Sugar can be really bad. In my chemical engineering classes we studied a sugar factory once that had a false ceiling and nobody realized that sugar was getting blown up in that area with a tiny bit of water. It turned into something like cotton candy and built up for years. It caught fire and the entire plant exploded. It would have done less damage to drop a bunker buster on the building.
Seeing the flour in the thumbnail reminds me of an episode of Seconds to Disaster. There was a tunnel fire in Europe. The source? A truck that caught fire, and said truck's cargo was flour, and margarine. Both were found to be VERY flammable, and yet neither were considered dangerous goods at the time.
As a kid I tried adding a little nail polish remover to a candle. The flame jumped toward the bottle and many burning droplets on the table. Luckily it did not burn any marks on the table or anything else.
Back when I was in something like 3rd grade (think mid 60's), my class went to the Braun 'Town Talk' Bread factory in Pittsburgh, PA. for a field trip. (We went to the Heinz factory, too. Do schools even have industrial field trips anymore?) We had to wear booties so our shoes didn't make static sparks, and they made a huge deal out of how explosive the flour dust was - complete with a demonstration where they injected some flour dust into the air and ignited it with a spark plug. I remember it vividly because it made a pretty awesome fireball!
An hour ago I was cooking some sour dough, I had the burner on for something else, I cast some flour and it caught.. then this video came out.. so the odds of life being a simulation have increased
A few more: My dad told me a story about superheated steam causing the planks on a scaffold to ignite. Super glue on paper towels solidifies very quickly, which is an exothermic process, it gets quite hot. Not sure if it will burst into flame on it's own, might take a lot of super glue. And then there's concentrated hydrogen peroxide, which will ignite pretty much anything combustible on contact, scary stuff.
i want to make a flour-fueled, internal combustion engine now. so, theoretically, someone could shred on a guitar so fast that their pick catches on fire. that would be epic.
It would be really difficult to get it to run well, as there would be a tendency for incomplete combustion to the sides of the cylinder, which would result in partially burned flour gumming everything up. However fine combustible powders can be made to work fairly well in a turbine engine. I think there are high efficiency coal plants that use finely powdered coal to turn a turbine, and then use the hot exhaust to heat steam to run through a second turbine. I think the military also looked at coal fired jet engines back in the 60's. Something like that could probably be modified to run on fine flour, although probably not with the best efficiency.
Way back before OSHA, my epic science teacher, Mr. Orloff, had us make "flour cannons" out of coffee cans and a spark generator and a small amount of flour (like a teaspoon). Lots of chips out of the plaster in that classroom's walls.
I remember as a kid crushing ping pong balls and packing them up in tinfoil with matches sticking out to make smoke bombs.. it worked worryingly well ! Fun times.
5:31 When I was a kid my mom got a new car and after the first few days taking it to work she came home complaining that it smelled of chemicals when she got in the car after work. Dad went out to look and he could smell it, but couldn't find a source. Then it stopped for a couple days then one days she said that when she got in the car there was smoke in it. Dad went out again and this time happened to look up at the ceiling of the car and it had these weird burn marks that went in these arcs across the ceiling. He looks down and sees moms magnifying makeup mirror sitting on the back seat. She would get to work a bit early and do her makeup in the car waiting for her shift to start then toss her mirror in the back seat. Some days it would land regular side up and not do anything, and some days it would land magnifying side up and those days it would burn the ceiling of the car. The arcs were from the sun moving across the sky, and they were in different spot depending on where she parked in the lot that day. Also when you drive on the 15 in Las Vegas during the late afternoon and evening in the summer you can feel when you drive through the sun's reflection coming off of the Delano Hotel.
am I gonna be the only one not surprised by any of these? seriously any form of grain or dust, like flour, can really screw it up if its part of the fuel source especially if there is a lot of it.
40 c is routine summer weather here. Love from Australia, yeah I'll just have a panic attack now, get in early. edit: it is spring now. Hospital linens can catch fire from being stacked after being in the dryers. It has to be cooled down before it can be stacked on the trolleys. This was in the 1980s, they may have changed the methods / materials since then.
When learning how to extinguish fire when in the RN the instuctor did this cup of water on a VERY long pole tip cup into burning oil and whoooosh huge ball of flame this just before we went into a mockup of a ship to extinguish a fire (a small one) with a fire extinguisher. OH and there were no lights dark as a coalhole at midnight. Fun times.
I don't think 6 counts because it's already on fire, and most people already know that cooking oil is flammable. But doing that would just make it ten times worse
When I was in my teens I was making smoke bombs using lots of chopped ping pong balls wrapped in tinfoil. There was a lot of smoke. Enough to conceal a battalion closing in towards the enemy lines.
Insurance Company: So what were you guys doing before the house caught fire? - oh we were just celebrating a gender review party by bursting colored flour ballons when Sara spilled the glass jar of oil onto the newly vanished table the boys were playing beer pong on, while she was trying to remove paint marks on the window with nail polish remover. we honestly were just having fun. oh, the losers have to take flaming shots.
Many dust based industries have fire hazards, I worked in a metal grinding plant that produced powdered metal for various purposes. The mill had an explosively vented roof, so when the mill exploded (not if, when), the explosion would be “harmlessly” vented away. Despite this, the local fire service considered the nearby flour mill a worse explosion threat since there was little they could do if the powdered metal caught fire (water based fire suppression just caused the metal fires to explode) but a flour mill fire could be fought.
We have all experimented with these things I am sure. Glycerin and potassium permanganate will spontaneously catch fire. We made thermite in school chemistry.
In 2008, Hallmark recalled Jumbo snow globes (around 11 inches in diameter) because of two reports of fire. Smaller versions were not recalled, so that's around the limit of Holiday cheer allowed by physics.🙃
I once set a rag on top of the linseed oil can and went for lunch, when coating wainscoting in the bathroom. 30 minutes later the rag was smoking. Mechanic shops use clearly marked 'oily rags' bins for the same reason, but I was always told they caught fire from gravity
In the pre-mulch days of mowing, our trash can full of grass clippings spontaneously combusted. Also, as others have confirmed here, grain mills can explode. It's rare now with construction improvements, but back in the day I remember several of them blowing up.
Fun fact: "Keep your nose to the grindstone" comes from flour mills. When you were working fast, you had to keep your nose next to the grindstone to smell if the flour was getting too hot. Otherwise, the air in the room could explode. So "keep your nose to the grindstone" isn't telling you to work harder. It's telling you that if you're working hard, stay safe.
.."You're" staying safe. True that. I'm just pointing out though that your device missed out on a You're before stay safe.
Good day.))
Thank you! I always thought that phrase sounded absurd, now it makes sense!
@@guytheincognito4186 Nope. "It's telling you that if you're working hard, stay safe." Read it again. "It's telling you that if you're working hard, you're staying safe" doesn't make sense for the context.
@@MiscBains
Wrong. It literally states "So " _keep your nose to the grindstone_ " *isn't* telling you to *work harder* ". It's telling you that "if you're working hard, ... stay safe." End Quote.
It's literally what it is. The grammar is incomplete. So it can either be "you're" as I put it or you can rephrase it "if you're working hard, *you'll* stay safe."
Because it's referencing the flower igniting if you're not paying attention to it while it's on the stone.
So I got the context perfectly fine thx.
@@guytheincognito4186 No. "Stay safe" is a command, with a you implied as the subject. Saying that you'll be safe because you're working hard is completely counter to the entire point of the original statement.
I remember my Industrial Safety teacher not shutting up about how surprisingly flammable seemingly harmless powders tend to be. He must have repeated it at least once a week while I took that class.
Yep. Found that out from Bondo after sanding it. The powder from sanding flashes up real fast.
See, but you remember that.
Means the teacher did a good job
Good teacher
If it used to be alive, it's flammable.
@@NereidAlbel even if it didn't, like titanium
"...nothing to fret about." I facepalmed so hard, I almost set myself on fire.
that guitar solo is pure fire...
I concur
Me too 🤣
Lol
Shred too hard and you might end up recording a real facemelter.
Wire wool in the same drawer as 9-volt batteries can be a serious fire-hazard!
My dad carries "special" coins (basically just cool old ones that he likes the design of) in his pocket along with other little trinkets. Although, one time he forgot he put a mostly dead 9V battery in his pocket too. After awhile, he noticed a spot on his leg getting extra toasty but didn't really consider why. That is, until it burned a hole in his pocket while we were getting gas. The coin happened to touch both the nodes of the battery and conduct the remaining energy through it, superheating until the nylon in his pants melted. The strange point of heat happened again after he put his keys in his pocket. Eventually he decided to just remove the battery. 😂
Two 9 volt batteries can also get very hot when shorted together. czcams.com/video/75_f6CjIcz8/video.html
My favorite fire starter in emergency situations is steel wool and a 9-volt battery. Technically any battery would work, but it's easier to work with batteries that have both terminals on the same side.
really prety in the right circumstance.
@@MontgomeryWenis Similar thing happened to me when I was a kid, except it was a AA battery with several coins.
I work in a pastry factory and my job is to clean the flour that ends up coating everything since its pumped in from the silos under high pressure outside. I've always been paranoid of powder explosions but this video only consolidates that.
Have you seen or heard of the Imperial Sugar factory explosion? If not, the US CSB (Chemical Safety Board) has a video reviewing the incident in detail.
You are just being appropriately cautious!🔥
I'd show this video, hell, a whole compilation of powder explosion videos to ANYONE who thinks you're being too paranoid. It's not paranoia if they're really out to get you- and while there's no conspiracy at your job (or, well, there shouldn't be) the same principle applies.
It's not paranoia if the danger is real!
That used to be a very real, serious risk in sawmills. It's largely why they soak the logs in water before they get sawn.
Mythbusters confirmed this to be true, except they used powdered milk. The fireball was amazing
Another one I recently learned about (having not grown up in the country: Damp hay in a large pile or bale can catch fire, just sitting there "by itself"!
The hay in the pile continues to respire, as plants do, and mold and bacteria start breaking it down, as they do. Both of these process create heat. If the temperature gets high enough, you have to start worrying about a barn fire. Because it will ignite itself.
Thanks for reminding me, there was a haystack fire at a farm in near my home in the 1970s. That was said to be due to spontaneous ignition.
Wow! Makes so much sense, but I NEVER would have considered that...
Or piles of grain (such as wheat, oats or barley) if not dry enough.
We had mulch delivered last summer, big pile was dumped next to the garage. I was freshly shredded pine. It was hot. By the next day it was smoldering. All the neighbours were told to take some immediately as I tried to rake the pile down. The inside of the pile was just ash. We ended up with only half the mulch we wanted but at least the garage didn't burn down and the neighbours were happy.
@@lenabreijer1311 Yeah, anything that you'd put into a mulch pile or compost and such, you either need to rake around once a day or just keep an eye on before something like that happens. Heat from decomposition can cause big problems. Especially in summer.
Flour dust and the dust from handling wheat in general is a HUGE fire risk. Even to this day, old wooden grain elevators catch fire and burn to the ground in a matter of a couple hours if they don't outright explode ... actually watched one burn down in my Grandparents town one night. Lit up the night sky so bright the roosters all thought it was morning at 2AM.
Was it wet grain in there? Since wet grain can and will self combust.
@@Notmyname1593 Exactly same for big piles of straw (in France we call those big cylinders of straw "bottes") if it's not dry enough, bacteria in the centrer will thrive with oxygen, even if the stuff is compressed by machines, eventually rising the temperature to flashpoint. It happened this summer to a farmer near my grandma's house. Fire was not visible but it was smoking a lot, and passing by neighbors immediatly called firefighters
I am so glad I watched this- I use linseed oil to clean and condition my terracotta floor tiles AND I keep the cloths in a plastic bag with the container of linseed oil! Yup, definitely glad I watched this, thanks guys! x
I read about this fire risk of linseed oil somewhere years ago and never had a chance to use it but if the container of this oil does not have a big warning label by now I will probably miss the fine print.
Storing used linseed oil rags in a sealed container, such as a mason jar, will avoid this problem - any oxidation will deplete the oxygen levels in the container and slow the self heating.
It is recommended that such storage not be in direct sunlight! (See glass)
CZcamsr called Torbjon is a blacksmith. He uses linseed oil to rust proof many of his items. He is always showing himself tossing the paper rags he uses with the linseed into his coal forge and makes a point to remind everyone to always burn those paper rags immediately after using. I never knew why until now.
Linseed oil is used in oil paintings. The amount is very small, but you still need to be careful.
@@mikekane1980 Thank you! x
I started enjoying the sun one morning and noticed light smoke coming from a plant stand, the new glass sphere water jug was burning a wood bench it had been set on. There was a long curved burn line from previous morning when it was placed on the bench, thankfully I managed to notice before it became a problem.
Old school flour mills could only operate during the day, since it was not safe to light a lamp to see at night.
kinda bullcrap.
the are many old german tales about mills creaking in the night.
also mills dont really need light to work.
since every mill was basically family project, its only bad constructed ones that had dust in the air.
source: german miller
@@fast1nakus I'm wrong and I misunderstood, I apologize
Pretty sure that’s only true by default. They never had night shifts before electricity. They didn’t have enough light, they didn’t have assembly lines. They also didn’t have enough people to create a demand for a second shift of flour makers.
You keep grinding though Louis
You have to admit, bakeries have a reputation for a reason. The Great Fire of London (1666) was started on Baker Street.
Enough demand? Europe lived on bread! The Bread Makers Guilds were the original mafia because grain and bread were so valuable and so universally needed. The only countries that didn't have that were Nordic (because they lived off dried salted cod) and the Irish (potatoes - until the blight, of course).
In witchy stores, good employees tell their customers to ALWAYS cover their crystal ball. Not because of supernatural stuff, but because they start fires so easily!
Witchy stores ? Thats the dumbest word I've ever heard someone use to describe occult or pagan specialty stores
@@MaekarManastorm but isn't it accurate?
@@MaekarManastorm As a witch myself Imma say nahhh, stop spreading the bad vibes fam
@@Siara87 It is accurate lol
@@dork_mork6953 ha, actual practiceoners do not you refer to themselves that way.
Good try though . 0/10
Actually I once chipped my guitar pick and thought "I'm just gonna melt that edge off, so it's nice and smooth again" and that thing basically puffed into smoke instantly after getting close to the lighter
Same material as ping pong ball.
The exact same thing happened to me. Only much later I learned that it must have been a celluloid pick.
@@mediacoregroupph I guess - I looked up why it instanly "exploded" and saw that they were made of celluloid
Somewhere out there, there is a guitar solo being played *so hard* right now, that their celluloid pick bursts into flame.
I'm hoping for a SciShow/Rick Beato collab.
"See where his hair caught fire? That was Cdim/D add9."
"Very kinetic."
BRUTAL
Sticker on guitar : "No Hot Licks Allowed"
“This machine is a fire hazard” sticker on a guitar
That's metal. I like it.
I've worked in the dust collection industry for a few years and one of the first lessons we learn is that common food items like sugar, flour, coffee creamer, etc are all explosive.
Just do a big of digging, and you can find stories of entire factories being leveled due to dust explosions. There was one in Texas a number of years ago that saw a concrete grain silo cap that weighted approximately 8 tons thrown over 3 miles from the site after the dust went up.
Ping Pong balls burn out really fast (in a fun way)! My brother and I found this as kids randomly when trying to see what happens if you burn a cracked one :) So the hypothesis of flammable gas inside was definitely out. But we thought it was something similar to camphor (since the burn rate and flames were similar) - now I know it’s celluloid. Will try out guitar picks too
Its not "celluloid" its nitrocellulose
@@adambartlett114 I know
@@Ozzy4201 it's both. Celluloid is made from nitrocellulose and camphor.
"Celluloids are a class of materials produced by mixing nitrocellulose and camphor, often with added dyes and other agents. Once much more common for its use as photographic film before the advent of safer methods, celluloid's common contemporary uses are table tennis balls, musical instruments, combs, office equipment, and guitar picks."
Edit: oh they literally explain this in the video. Clearly you didn't watch it.
Great to fling off high buildings when on fire 🔥
When I was a game room tech in college a veteran showed me how they burned up rapidly as they fell most never hitting the ground from arm height.
You forgot to mention one very important point about acetone. The vapor is heavier-than-air even when heated especially. That can cause even a little bit of acetone evaporating to sink down and run across the surface of say, a countertop to the flame and then ignite. It also means that if you use an open flame in order to help dry a project that you use paint on the Flames will rise up the ccolumn of acetone Vapor immediately
I can't think of any sensible reason to dry paint using an open flame.
Very useful info. Thank you.
@@jennyjohn704 not so much drying it, but I've used a torch to heat steel up immediately before painting lots of times. When it's -10⁰c outside, you do what you have to
Diethyl ether/ether is notorious for vapours finding ignition sources even just on hot surfaces
@@jennyjohn704 just because it isn't sensible doesn't mean it doesn't happen... also lots of things are an open flame that you wouldn't think about us being an open . Such as a tank Mount infrared propane heater. When operating properly you can't see the flame all you can feel its heat and because it's infrared and the tendency to cause a lot of evaporation from volitle organic compounds. And a lot of people use those style of heater in places that have no electricity or maybe are being prepared for renting thu's leading to the circumstances I just spoke about
Firewood: "Oh no, I need lighter fluid and several minutes to catch fire"
Linseed oil: "Fine... I'll do it myself"
Woodworker here that works with BLO (boiled linseed oil). . .
It's harder than hell for it to catch fire unless you're an idiot and throw rags upon rags soaked with it into a pile with literally zero airflow. Most sites should have a sealed barrel to put rags covered in oil-based finishes. The sealed barrel keeps oxygen away so it stops oxidation as well as containing a flame just in case.
For homeowners, don't wash oil-based finishes down the sink; they wreak havoc on water treatment equipment. Some also contain heavy metals (this is why you should wear gloves when applying oil-based finishes). Spread the rag out on the floor or on a towel drying rack. If you're super worried about it igniting, you can put a fan blowing on it to remove heat from the rag.
@@AC-cg4be many don't know that. I was polishing a bed head board...and got tired and put the rag down on a dresser and went and laid down to take a nap. Someone walked by and shut the drawer. A few minutes later my pup woke me up crying...the dresser drawer was on fire. SO don't tell me or anyone else it's 'harder than hell to catch fire....' Moronski.
How bad are you at lighting fires that you need lighter fluid and several minutes haha
“I need lighter fluid to start a fire”
When society collapses you will be among the first to die.
"Nondairy coffee creamers can be flammable too"
Ah, the memories of the infamous coffee creamer cannon that the Mythbusters created...
Many powders have that propties.
i was literally about to type this. that was a huge fireball.
And immediately learned that Kari is perfectly willing to use her coworkers as human shields.
@@athena8794 also learned that there's always at least 1 idiot at work that's dumb enough to let themselves be used as a human shield. Generally it's the same idiot that's Willing to stick their finger into a light socket to test if the powers out.
@@crinkly.love-stick So... Tory?
I have been surrounded by a ball of fire thanks to flour, it was almost like a bomb went off. I was just in the right spot and just the right amount of flour on me that I only walked away with just burnt hair. The speed of the burn was my savior at the end. People from about 2 blocks away came running and people close by ran away
Did something similar once! Had a bunch of very fine sawdust on my arms from polishing a few parts only for a tiny spark to erupt into flames across my forearms and chest but only the edges where it slowed down did it actually burn anything
As a painter who has linseed oil covered rags from me moving oil paints around the canvas I appreciate now being aware that I should probably keep an eye on my rags, drying pieces, and supplies more than I already do, thanks!
In advanced science in 8th grade, we simulated grain dust explosions, as earlier that summer, a grain elevator in our state went kaboom. Sugar is far more combustible than flour; we almost set the lab on fire. Fun times.
Red dead Redemption 2 showed us sugar can go boom.
Never got to do this at school, you had a cool 8th grade.
Non-dairy creamer in an aero-dust form is f- - king explosive! It makes flour child’s’ play.
@@aniketbiswas7660 It's what happens when a school actually has a decent budget and good teachers.
My family were once mill owners, before there was a spark and... well, the rest is history. Throughout history, mills have had a tendency for pyrotechnics. There are records as early as days of the Norman Conquest and as recently as only a few years ago in automated plants of explosions caused by sparks from grindstones. Flour is no joke!
The US Chemical Safety Board has whole videos explaining in detail the dangers of combustable dust!
Yoooo it’s the funny Bionicle man
a flour explosion is what caused the great london fire
@@bounce9568 ayy
Mill City Museum here in Minneapolis can attest to that. the (at the time) worlds largest mill was destroyed by a flour explosion and resultant fire. they have the ruins of the place still visible and it looks a bomb had gone off
Flour can be used as a fuel air bomb, its speculated through-out history that some mills and bakeries have met their fiery doom due to a cloud of flour catching fire.
It's not speculated. We know this for sure lol
Terry Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment makes use of this.
Flour mills have definitely exploded When the right ratio hits but that’s not what a fuel air detonation is.
@@shanek6582 Uh, that's basically the definition. Fuel plus air, mixed at the right ratio for combustion to spread at the speed of sound. Boom.
@@alexandercanella4479 We know some for certain and some are speculation, it would be factually wrong to brand all unknown fires of bakeries and mills as such events.
The Imperial Sugar explosion. Several people were killed and the entire plant was destroyed. The building was mostly reinforced concrete. A few good videos on it.
Duuuuuude... just watched a clip. First scene was an aerial shot of the aftermath of the factory... my jaw LITERALLY dropped
Here's the US Chemical Safety Board's video:
czcams.com/video/Jg7mLSG-Yws/video.html
And sugar burns bloody hot, too.
I live about 8 miles away from the factory and I remember hearing the boom and the windows shaking, it was no joke.
Thanks to Mythbusters and highschool chemistry class I knew about all of these.
Here are some more examples:
- Dryer lint (countless drying fires are caused every year by neglecting to empty out the lint trap.)
- Used 9-volt batteries (if thrown in the trash alongside combustible refuse residual sparks can cause trash fires.)
- Lysol and other air fresheners. (There's a reason they're often used as makeshift flamethrowers in action movies.)
- Styrofoam. (Same reason as ping-pong balls.)
- Aluminum + iron rust (if given a spark, this can cause a self-oxidizing reaction that burns hot enough to melt through almost any material. It was one of the Mythbuster's favourite crazy things to work with for this reason. They used it to literally melt a car in half.)
Got some me, pepcon rocket fuel explosion Nevada,kolding Denmark fireworks factory explosion
reminds me of a scene in the movie "live and let die", where Jame Bond uses a can of Shaving Cream as a makeshift flamethrower.
Isn't the last one basically thermite? 🤔
@@hansisbrucker813 Yeah. Thermite typically contains a binder as well, so as to keep the mixture stable and homogeneous, but Aluminium + Iron Oxide + heat gives you a thermite reaction.
@@pyrodrayson3216 Yes, but if you've ever messed with it thermite is really freaking hard to ignite. Aluminum is self-stabilizing in that every bit of is is covered in a near monatomic layer of aluminum oxide, preventing the rest from reacting with anything. You need to get the thermite hot enough to melt the aluminum before it can come into contact with the iron oxide. A standard lighter isn't going to cut it, and a spark generally isn't long enough to melt it. Most of the time magnesium is used to light it, as that *can* be lit by more conventional means and burns hot enough to ignite the thermite. And it makes a nifty looking fuse, as well.
Pyromaniacs watching this video: hmmm...yes... interesting
Kowalski, analysis!
Great video! Something I wanted to point out is that fire requires 4 things, not 3, to happen. Oxygen, heat, fuel, and the chemical reaction. That's why we use a fire tetrahedron rather than a fire triangle these days when describing ways to extinguish fires. There are fire extinguishers that specifically disrupt the chemical reaction in order to put out fires, instead of trying to reduce heat or cut off oxygen like with water or CO2 respectively.
Technically it doesn't even need Oxygen. It needs an Oxidant. This distinction is important in many times of fire. For example a Magnesium Fire cannot be fought with Water as the reaction is strong enough that H2O will act as an Oxidant. In fact adding water makes the fire worse.
Likewise certain really powerful Oxidants will allow you to burn fuel that under normal circumstances isn't even flammable, see Scishow's episode on 5 of the World's Most Dangerous Chemicals. I don't know WHY people don't talk about this more as the more I live as an adult the more often it seems to come up.
The same architect who designed the curved glass building that melted the plastic trim on cars in London, Rafael Vinoly, had the same problem with another building he designed, the Vidara hotel in LasVegas.
You'd think accidentally melting cars with a building wouldn't happen more than once.
I was expecting somebody to do the Doofenschmirtz "two nickels" paraphrase...
I worked at an outdoor glass sale once, where we kept having to shade or move the items out of the sun, because the paper carton things they were sitting on kept starting to smolder.
My high school chemistry teacher had us conduct an experiment with aluminum sulfate and ammonium nitrate. 1/4 gram of each, sifted together and then piled on a plate. We strung a length of detcord across the quad to it and lit the fuse. When the flame reached the powder, it went up in a 6' high mushroom cloud.
Remember when the Mythbusters were almost killed in a non-dairy creamer explosion?
You want a fuel that sets itself on fire thats really weird? Hay bails can catch fire after getting wet!
Believe it or not rain on hay in the paddock can cause it to catch fire
For anyone who doesn't know, hay can continue to respire for a significant time after it's harvested, as plants do, and bacteria and mould break it down, as they do. Both of these processes require water, and produce heat. Large enough bales with enough water (especially in summer when it's already hot) can easily push the hay above its flash point and then there's no putting it out.
Keep your barn roof water-tight, or you might find your hayloft ablaze!
Whoa.
I have witnessed several neighbor's barns burn down due to this. Hay that's put away too wet, in large piles, can start to break down by bacteria action. This releases heat. In the middle of the pile, this can lead to runaway temperatures, with the bales first smelling of mold, then hot grass, then smoke, then bursting into flames when the pile is opened and air reaches the smoldering hay. Hay must be dry when put into storage!
everything can burn if you try hard enough
Facts!
"Nothing to fret about" ... Really stuck your *neck* out with that one. I'm sure other viewers are in *a chord* with me.
+
"other viewers are in a *chord* with me" ... Really stuck your neck out with that one.
You sure are _in tune_ with these musical jokes
@@deprivedoftrance when it comes to music puns, my motto is "Always B-sharp, never B-flat."
@@JohnDrummondPhoto Sound advice! Never B-flat, it's the only way to be A-sharp one.
One nasty self igniting all day thing is moist (not wet, just moist) cut grass or hey. In agriculture, this is a topic (microbial action is followed by chemical cellulose oxidation above 70 °C), producing quite some fires. Occasionally it also hits hobby gardeners, when grass cut is composted somewhere too close to ignitable things
One thing I have learnt from binge-watching CSB safety videos is that dust explosions happen a lot in the US across different industries.
My wife one night while I was taking a nap, she screwed up and it was bad. One of my kids had spilt some grease moving a skillet. I'm not sure if they tried to clean it or tried to hide that they made a mess. Well my wife always washes and puts the clean pots on the stove. So when she started cooking and the burner got hot enough, the grease caught fire. I woke up to the smoke alarm going off and as I was walking into the kitchen, my wife had a 5lb bag of flour and was in the motion of throwing it on the fire. I saw what she had and started screaming NOOO!!! But it is so hard to stop when you already started. I think we are all like that. The flower was like an explosion of fire and luckily I had a fire extinguisher next to the fridge. So I was able to put it out almost as fast as it started.
I asked her what in the world was she doing? She said that the fire chief that lives next door had said the easiest way of putting a grease fire out. Is by a simple stuff that you have at the house already. She says that she remembers him saying flour!!! I told her, yes baby you probably did hear him say flour. She says you see even you agree. I said yeah I agree that he said NEVER USE FLOUR TO PUT A FIRE OUT!!! At 11pm she walked next door and woke that old man up to ask him about flour on a grease fire.... I was so embarrassed and trying so hard to apologize to him for her waking him up. She told him that she was not able to sleep until she knew that either she was right or if I was right. The fire chief just said, yeah never use flour to put any kind of fire out especially a grease fire. Flour becomes a fuel that will burn your house down before you can make a call or do anything. She asked him, what did you tell us to use then. He said Baking soda young lady baking soda. I just said thank you and turned to my wife and said, baby can we please go to bed now. The fire chief says yes baby, can I please go back to bed now. Lmao. That was it and the next time we went shopping my wife bought a big bucket and filled it with baking soda.
"There haven't been any unintentional fires started by guitar picks..."
*Herman Li has entered the chat*
Damp hay/straw can catch on fire on its own. If you gather/bale it without it being dry enough, microorganisms will start breaking it down. The heat from this process is enough to make it catch on fire if it is stored semi-compactly. A lot of barns and haystacks have burned down due to this.
Hot haystacks and unturned compost piles - and sniff before turning that pile!
As a kid, I was play on the school's playground during summer vaction. They had been sanding down all the swear words on the wooden desk, at the school. The was a large barrel of sand down desk tops. We were playing with, just throwing it in the air. There is always one kid with a lighter, in any group of kids. While we were standing in cload of desk top, he lite up his lighter. It exploid. We wern't standing next to an explosion, but right in side one. Other then being deafen, it set our hair on fire. We we okay, but we took all the that sand desk top away. It was more the powdered wood, but whatever they sealed the wood with. That stuff wold exploid, if you stuck a match in it. I don't know how I didn't die that summer.
Fine sawdust will do that. A sawdust fire burned down the Dobson organ factory earlier this year.
Shellac?
Cochroach wings disolved in methylated spirits and applied as varnish.
I have a fireplace and my father played competitive table tennis for decades. We use old balls as cat toys. Thanks for the warning.
Celluloid is still used in some products. Some high end ballpoint pens have it. Many older products in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, had it. Lots of toys included celluloid.
Celluloid also was/is still a common material used in making accordions. Celluloid is easy to mold over the frame and protect the instrument. It also helps seal up any small air leaks. However the plastic can eventually dry out and crack and yes, under certain circumstances, catch fire, just like any celluloid.
Putting oil in my car the other day, some dripped down the motor, onto the manifold, it flashed and caught fire.. I saved my car at a cost but I thought oil needed a naked flame.. Apparently, rust on my manifold reacted with the oil, turns out, engine oil can flash..
That must have been wicked hot. Oil on a manifold usually just smokes
@@stevenbeach748 yeah, she was hell hot.. apparently it was the chemical reaction, rust on the manifold, oil and heat... I managed to smother it out with my shirt, skin off all my knuckles, burnt my hands, forearms... I've seen a car go up before and wondered how a little engine fire can engulf a car so quickly.. I learned a few things that day..
You don't need rust, necessarily. Oil flashes when oil quenching steel, for instance, and continues to burn until the temperature is below red-hot.
@@sigmasquadleader Rust if not cared for can increase the surface area of the oil, which in turn make it easier to ignite.
Saw a guy show how CoffeeMate could be set on fire: took a packet of CoffeeMate, poured it into his hand. Pulledacricket lighter out, said watch this. Tossed the CoffeeMate up and flicked the cricket. Made an orange flash, not very big and no noise and little smoke.
Had a guy show me in high school when I worked in a mom and pop kitchen. He took it and poured it over a lighter. It was like a fire waterfall.
learned about celluloid flammability in high school when a friend was playing guitar by a bonfire and another friend was tired of it and tossed his pick in the fire
as one who used to play LARP, we used to use flour or even better Coco powder (for making hot chocolate) to make a flash of fire in the campfire.
and as one who grew up on the country i have seen a fire caused by self igniting hay, it apparently where a bit wet when pressed and put on the loft and when it then starts rotting it gets hot, and can get hot enough to set it self on fire.
That happened to a haystack at a farm near me in the 1970s, if my memory is correct there had been heavy rain the previous week.
I've seen flour used in DIY pyrotechnics. I remember at a LARP, we did some kind of ritual and one of the steps was to grab a small handful of flour and throw it at a fire. It's really effective and showy. Just stay a few feet away because it gets surprisingly hot even if only for half a second.
I gotta tell you, these videos are easy to watch while drunk. The whole "I'm gonna tell things simple and quote the direct thing I say" helps it a lot.
1:50 Saying that the chemicals contain energetic bonds is the wrong way to think about it. The bonds TAKE energy to be broken, but after that more energy can be released by the formation of new bonds to oxygen.
Activation energy isn't the same as an exothermic reaction. Those bonds do contain potential chemical energy. The energy is released, as you said, through oxidation.
@@sigmasquadleader The bonds only 'contain' energy in the sense that there are bonds with even less energy that could be formed (like to oxygen). I prefer to think of it as the chemical as a whole containing that potential energy, or the atoms containing a lot of potential energy that has only been partially released by the present bonds.
I agree that saying that the bonds contain potential energy can be valid and helpful, but I've seen many chemistry students make mistakes due to misunderstanding this concept. They can't grasp how to draw energy diagrams or orbital energies because they think that the breaking of the bond releases energy while the opposite is true.
One of the biggest dangers working at a flour mill is explosion. Mill explosions are insane.
It used to be a danger in cotton mills as well.
Plenty of people have learned some of this the hard way when their decorative crystal balls, mirrors they use to do their makeup in front of a sunny window, or crystal sun catcher things light a fire. I wouldn't trust one of those beautiful crystal looking doorknobs either. Not in a sunny room.
8:52 It wasn't just ping pong balls. Billiard Balls were also made from celluloid, but this was discontinued rather quickly, as it was found that the Billiards had the tendency to explode when striking one another.
I want to see celluloid billiards exploding when hitting eachother now
I use acetone for a few things. In this case, cleaning metal before welding. I forgot about the rag I had used and fwoosh, fireball LoL set my whole table on fire. Just one spark. Fortunately, my table is made out of steel.
The rag set a steel table on fire?
English is as much fun as fire.
@@seanpeacock4290 Yep, I agree. The second moral of that story is to clean up spills.
@@seanpeacock4290 Acetone evaporating at room temp produces a pretty big cloud of heavier than air vapor, it will creep along surfaces, and when goes lights up a much bigger area than just where it was sitting.
Someone had a bottle of nail polish remover next to a candle, it randomly exploded into a fireball, burned their house down. They lived close to me but not too close, we didnt see it
"number one: my highschool!"
lol
Every los Angeles highschool
Anyone who grew up in the Midwest ("corn-country") knows how explosive corn dust is. A detonating elevator during harvest is like a FAE was dropped in town!
That building in London is 20 Fenchurch Street, designed by Rafael Viñoly. He also designed a hotel in Las Vegas called Vdara *which does the same thing*! On particularly sunny days the pool area would get so hot it would melt plastic cups and some guests even reported smelling their hair starting to burn.
Do party fog machines have the same fire risk as flour? They basically suspend glycerin particles in the air, and isn't glycerin just another carbon-based flammable substance?
They can set off smoke detectors. A fog machine was used at a school dance and set them off. That's how I know.
Until I got interested in woodworking, I had not realized HOW Dangerous wood stain products are. The rags can catch fire also if you leave them to dry as is. Spontaneous trash can and garage fires have happened many times
I looked at a home for sale last year that a large portion of the vinyl siding on one side of the house looked melted. I thought maybe the house next door had suffered a fire, but it turns out that a recently added window to that facing side was reflecting the sunlight onto the house I looked at
I take private lessons from Michael Angelo Batio, who used to literally melt his guitar picks due to his preternatural speed (if you don't know who he is, Google him...his playing is insane, and he can play with both hands on two different necks at the same time - crazy good - he also has a CZcams channel). Some of the best players in the world learned from him (Dimebag, Petrucci and Morello), so hopefully I'll be able to consider myself among them one day. He talks about melting his picks in one of his training videos from the 80s or 90s. Can't remember if it's Speed Kills or an earlier one.
Old varnish rags can catch fire. Probably because of the linseed oil in it.
I once did some automation work in a flour mill. The first order of business was a class about dust safety. It included a small demo exploding some flour. It does indeed go bang.
Jimmy Hendrix would be really interested about flammable guitar picks werehe still alive.
More so in his day, but even today, some guitars are finished with nitrocellulose lacquer.
@@cjmiller511 Nitro lacquer is very thin though, and really only a hazard to itself when confronted with heat. There are people (Danish Pete once did this to a gold top Les Paul for an Anderton's video) who use heat guns and hair dryers to deliberately crack nitro finishes to make them look older than they are. An electric guitar is unlikely to be heated sufficiently to be in any danger, although acoustic guitars might be more susceptible because of their much greater surface-to-volume ratio.
I remember when I was a kid I drew up a bunch of "inventions" in a notebook. One of the drawings I made was like a sort of "self defense" fire cannon, and the design was a bunch of pencil shavings shoved into a paper towel roll, with a lighter taped to one end and a mouth piece on the other lol.
I guess we just need to get a guitarist that can jam hard enough, to set it ablaze. Where are you Jimmy? We need you!
I’ve been keeping the ‘flour explodes’ fact in the back of my mind for years. I keep imagining a group of armed assassins tries to break into my house but I saw them coming, kicked on all the fans and shook bangs of flour everywhere. They walk in ready to shoot but then I tell them if they use the guns the entire place will explode, then it becomes a lot easier to fight them =*-*= at least it is in my fantasy 🤣
Yes girl boss pop off
exactly 😌
I never heard about linseed's oxidation properties before. That's crazy! Reminds me of straw balls that combust due to the heat generated by bacteria living in there.
The guitarpick one caught me really off guard, i was just about to pickup my guitar
Important note. Only "boiled linseed oil" dries quickly enough to produce enough heat to catch fire. Plain, unprocessed linseed oil takes a lot longer to dry. That being said, most linseed oil that an average person uses is boiled linseed oil.
*taking notes for DnD *
Sugar can be really bad. In my chemical engineering classes we studied a sugar factory once that had a false ceiling and nobody realized that sugar was getting blown up in that area with a tiny bit of water. It turned into something like cotton candy and built up for years. It caught fire and the entire plant exploded. It would have done less damage to drop a bunker buster on the building.
Seeing the flour in the thumbnail reminds me of an episode of Seconds to Disaster. There was a tunnel fire in Europe. The source? A truck that caught fire, and said truck's cargo was flour, and margarine. Both were found to be VERY flammable, and yet neither were considered dangerous goods at the time.
As a kid I tried adding a little nail polish remover to a candle. The flame jumped toward the bottle and many burning droplets on the table. Luckily it did not burn any marks on the table or anything else.
Things that can catch fire: My tap water
If that's the case I would get my water tested and switch to bottled while waiting for the results.
Also, might want to skip blow drying your hair...
Back when I was in something like 3rd grade (think mid 60's), my class went to the Braun 'Town Talk' Bread factory
in Pittsburgh, PA. for a field trip. (We went to the Heinz factory, too. Do schools even have industrial field trips anymore?)
We had to wear booties so our shoes didn't make static sparks, and they made a huge deal out of how explosive
the flour dust was - complete with a demonstration where they injected some flour dust into the air and ignited it
with a spark plug.
I remember it vividly because it made a pretty awesome fireball!
Him: guitar picks.
The person who plays the guitar in TTFAF: Through the fire and the flames we carry on.
Lol that last pun... Dads all across the world would be proud.
Absolute gold lol
An hour ago I was cooking some sour dough, I had the burner on for something else, I cast some flour and it caught.. then this video came out.. so the odds of life being a simulation have increased
A few more:
My dad told me a story about superheated steam causing the planks on a scaffold to ignite.
Super glue on paper towels solidifies very quickly, which is an exothermic process, it gets quite hot. Not sure if it will burst into flame on it's own, might take a lot of super glue.
And then there's concentrated hydrogen peroxide, which will ignite pretty much anything combustible on contact, scary stuff.
I've definitely been burned by superglue before. Pressed down to make sure it was making good contact and it was scorching hot.
@Patti DePra about 60% would be my guess.
i want to make a flour-fueled, internal combustion engine now.
so, theoretically, someone could shred on a guitar so fast that their pick catches on fire. that would be epic.
It would be really difficult to get it to run well, as there would be a tendency for incomplete combustion to the sides of the cylinder, which would result in partially burned flour gumming everything up. However fine combustible powders can be made to work fairly well in a turbine engine. I think there are high efficiency coal plants that use finely powdered coal to turn a turbine, and then use the hot exhaust to heat steam to run through a second turbine. I think the military also looked at coal fired jet engines back in the 60's. Something like that could probably be modified to run on fine flour, although probably not with the best efficiency.
@@faroncobb6040 awesome response. i did suspect the gumming issue but considered there may be a solution.
Way back before OSHA, my epic science teacher, Mr. Orloff, had us make "flour cannons" out of coffee cans and a spark generator and a small amount of flour (like a teaspoon). Lots of chips out of the plaster in that classroom's walls.
We did that as well back in the 1970s.
I remember as a kid crushing ping pong balls and packing them up in tinfoil with matches sticking out to make smoke bombs.. it worked worryingly well ! Fun times.
"and since a lot of these are found in our homes, knowing these might even keep you safe"
Me: *gets excited to burn common household items*
the knife when I put it in the microwave
I sincerely hope you dont think, that the Sparks are the Metal burning! 🤔
@@mho... the knife in the microwave made everything burn so clearly something in there caught fire
5:31 When I was a kid my mom got a new car and after the first few days taking it to work she came home complaining that it smelled of chemicals when she got in the car after work. Dad went out to look and he could smell it, but couldn't find a source. Then it stopped for a couple days then one days she said that when she got in the car there was smoke in it. Dad went out again and this time happened to look up at the ceiling of the car and it had these weird burn marks that went in these arcs across the ceiling. He looks down and sees moms magnifying makeup mirror sitting on the back seat.
She would get to work a bit early and do her makeup in the car waiting for her shift to start then toss her mirror in the back seat. Some days it would land regular side up and not do anything, and some days it would land magnifying side up and those days it would burn the ceiling of the car. The arcs were from the sun moving across the sky, and they were in different spot depending on where she parked in the lot that day.
Also when you drive on the 15 in Las Vegas during the late afternoon and evening in the summer you can feel when you drive through the sun's reflection coming off of the Delano Hotel.
am I gonna be the only one not surprised by any of these? seriously any form of grain or dust, like flour, can really screw it up if its part of the fuel source especially if there is a lot of it.
Was that the reaction of people who already knew this when you learned about it?
@@SlyPearTree my dad does industrial hygiene so I learn a lot about this stuff from him while watching these videos or shows on engineering disasters
40 c is routine summer weather here. Love from Australia, yeah I'll just have a panic attack now, get in early.
edit: it is spring now.
Hospital linens can catch fire from being stacked after being in the dryers. It has to be cooled down before it can be stacked on the trolleys. This was in the 1980s, they may have changed the methods / materials since then.
6. Throw some water on an oil fire and watch boom...
7. steel-wool - same reason as flour
When learning how to extinguish fire when in the RN the instuctor did this cup of water on a VERY long pole tip cup into burning oil and whoooosh huge ball of flame this just before we went into a mockup of a ship to extinguish a fire (a small one) with a fire extinguisher. OH and there were no lights dark as a coalhole at midnight. Fun times.
I don't think 6 counts because it's already on fire, and most people already know that cooking oil is flammable. But doing that would just make it ten times worse
When I was in my teens I was making smoke bombs using lots of chopped ping pong balls wrapped in tinfoil. There was a lot of smoke. Enough to conceal a battalion closing in towards the enemy lines.
Day 101 of asking for the return of Scishow Quizshow
7:28
In place of number 5 being revealed, I got an ad for toilet paper
I was laughing so loud, lmao
Insurance Company: So what were you guys doing before the house caught fire?
- oh we were just celebrating a gender review party by bursting colored flour ballons when Sara spilled the glass jar of oil onto the newly vanished table the boys were playing beer pong on, while she was trying to remove paint marks on the window with nail polish remover. we honestly were just having fun. oh, the losers have to take flaming shots.
Many dust based industries have fire hazards, I worked in a metal grinding plant that produced powdered metal for various purposes. The mill had an explosively vented roof, so when the mill exploded (not if, when), the explosion would be “harmlessly” vented away. Despite this, the local fire service considered the nearby flour mill a worse explosion threat since there was little they could do if the powdered metal caught fire (water based fire suppression just caused the metal fires to explode) but a flour mill fire could be fought.
You do realize you're now on some kindof watch list just for producing this video right?
'How to turn ordinary household items into bombs.'
We have all experimented with these things I am sure. Glycerin and potassium permanganate will spontaneously catch fire. We made thermite in school chemistry.
In 2008, Hallmark recalled Jumbo snow globes (around 11 inches in diameter) because of two reports of fire. Smaller versions were not recalled, so that's around the limit of Holiday cheer allowed by physics.🙃
I really like how you speak. It's very fluid yet calm. It's odd that flour is so flammable since it's what you use to put out a grease fire.
I once set a rag on top of the linseed oil can and went for lunch, when coating wainscoting in the bathroom. 30 minutes later the rag was smoking. Mechanic shops use clearly marked 'oily rags' bins for the same reason, but I was always told they caught fire from gravity
Jokes like “nothing to fret about” will keep me coming back forever.
In the pre-mulch days of mowing, our trash can full of grass clippings spontaneously combusted. Also, as others have confirmed here, grain mills can explode. It's rare now with construction improvements, but back in the day I remember several of them blowing up.