5 November: Fire

It's bonfire night and all over the UK people are lighting fires. Fire is defined as a rapid chemical change which produces heat and light, or for the more scientificially minded, the exothermic oxidation of a combustable substance. Ten facts about fire.

1. Three things are necessary for fire to happen: fuel, Oxygen and heat. Fire extinguishers work by removing one of those three things. Pouring Water on a fire removes the heat, a CO2 extinguisher removes the oxygen, for example. Hence Earth is the only planet in our Solar System where fire can exist. There's not enough oxygen on any of the others.
2. A flame is basically a mixture of gases and solids chemically reacting. Hence the colour of a flame varies according to what is being burnt and the oxygen level, not by how hot it is. This is why candle flames are blue at the bottom, because there they take up fresh air with more oxygen. At the top of the flame a lot of that oxygen has been burnt off, making the flame Yellow.
3. A candle flame burns at 1,000 degrees centigrade; a blowtorch at 2,200 degrees. If you burn a book, the paper burns at 451 degrees fahrenheit, which is why Ray Bradbury titled his book Fahrenheit 451 after his editors told him his original title, The Fireman, was too boring.
4. No one knows who invented the fire hydrant, because the patent was lost... in a fire. Talking of fire hydrants, during the great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, just one fire hydrant survived long enough to be put to use putting out the fires started by the quake. That fire hydrant was painted gold in memory of the event. It's still there, in the Mission District at the top of Dolores Park. Every year, on the anniversary of the earthquake, it gets repainted.
5. When organic materials, such as wood, wax or petrol burn, oxygen combines with the hydrogen in the material and creates water. Chances are if you see a clear liquid dripping from the exhaust pipe of a car, it's the water produced by the controlled fire in the engine.
6. Early humans worshipped fire, and in time, personified it with fire deities. Some fire gods are: Ra and Sekhmet (Egypt); Fuji (Japan); Bridgit and Grannus (Celtic); Hephaestus (Greek); Vulcan (Roman); and Mixcoatl, the Aztec god who is said to have introduced fire to humanity.
7. Whatever you do, don't try to stick anything made of Cotton with superglue, because applying superglue to cotton makes it catch fire. Health and safety instructions will tell you not to wear cotton gloves or even Blue jeans, when using superglue.
8. In mythology, salamanders are associated with fire, because the creatures tend to hang out in rotting logs. When these logs were used as firewood, the salamanders would come out, and people thought they had been magically created by the flames.
9. Forest fires, or wildfires, travel faster uphill than downhill. The steeper the slope the faster the fire spreads. 90% of them are caused by human activity.
10. You can make fire using ice. The ice must be perfectly clear, however. To make a fire, carve it into the shape of a lens. Then it can be held over dry tinder in sunlight in the same way you might use a magnifying glass.

NEW!

Golden Thread

Terry Kennedy is inexplicably and inexorably drawn to the small town of Fiveswood as a place to live and work after university. He is sure he has never visited the town before, but when he arrives there, it seems oddly familiar.

Fiveswood has a rich and intriguing history. Local legends speak of giants, angels, wolves, a local Robin Hood, but most of all, a knight in golden armour. Fiveswood's history also has a dark side - mysterious deaths blamed on the plague, a ghostly black panther, and a landslide which buried the smugglers' caves.

Terry buys an apartment in The Heights, a house which has been empty for decades, since the previous owner disappeared. Now he has finally been declared dead, developers have moved in and turned it into six flats. Terry has the odd feeling he has lived in this enigmatic house before. But that is not all. Since childhood, Terry has had recurring, disturbing dreams which have been increasing in frequency so that now, he has them almost every night. To his dismay, the people from his nightmares are his new neighbours.

Except, that is, for Eleanor Millbrook. She is refreshingly unfamiliar. After Terry saves her from a mysterious attacker, they become close. However, Terry's nightmares encroach more and more on his waking life, until they lead him to a devastating discovery about who he really is.

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