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I think playing with fire is a basic part of being human. Humans, fire. The fire primate, why we don't have hair or fat for body heat, we have fire and clothe

I think playing with fire is a basic part of being human. Humans, fire. The fire primate, why we don't have hair or fat for body heat, we have fire and clothes. Like how else are you going to learn but seeing what happens if you eg play with the gauge on a lighter (for education, playing is mostly about learning), more flame, less flame, look at it, marvel at it. Doesn't mean getting burned though for sure there will be burns. And it's becoming a lost art, like everything's electric, less and less fire in the house for fewer and fewer reasons, fewer smokers smoking less, vaping instead (which I consider good, harm reduction all the way), fewer ways to make fire, offices rarely have incinerators any more, well paper too, fire and paper, another combo. Less metallurgy due to less manufacturing in the States. SF Fire Department actually now do more like...helping the evicteds, because the codes to eliminate fires have worked very well in the regard of preventing fires.

zabzonk 4y ago
My own worst experience with fire was with a Primus stove (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primus_stove https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primus_stove) when I was about 14. I'd squirted the priming meths alcohol from a squeezy bottle on to the stove and lit it. But then (because alcohol burns with a near-invisible flame I thought it had gone out, so I squirted more on, then ... boom! Squeezy blew open, sending burning meths everywhere. Luckily alcohol doesn't burn at a high temperature, so only all the skin on my hands peeled off. And this is no criticism of the Primus, just wittlessness on behalf of 14-year-old me. I don't suppose kids get to do this sort of stuff these days?
- genewitch 4y ago
  I show my kids by doing the same stupid stuff i did as a teen and how "dangerous" it is. Empty bottle of isopropyl alcohol? shake it, hold an electric or regular lighter over the opening - foomf. shake, foomf. shake, foomf. Over and over. The fire doesn't burn the liquid, but the vapor created by shaking the container. try explaining how a gas engine works to someone that doesn't understand how vapor burns but liquid doesn't. My latest "prove something" was taking my brightest flashlight and putting it flush against the bottom of a clear container of peanut butter in a dark room. When you shut off the flashlight, the peanut butter fluoresces. It "glows in the dark" for a short time. really cool. this whole PDF is whimsically old, but it has some good experiments nonetheless.
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
  They play Minecraft. Which I think is a great game, or was when I played it, I bought when I had no money, it was I think $40, and was very satisfied. I wanted to play it again see what had changed but Microsoft didn't honor my purchase, they wanted me to buy it again. Obviously not in so many words but dude they have hundreds of UI UX people they A/B test everything. They fucking know. They fucking know. It may have been a mistake (there is literally a 0 probability of this), all the same, I went through the whole protocol, did the backup option, the works. Totally agree that piracy is a service problem. Self-service. If I feel like playing Minecraft again I won't steal it, wrong word--seize it, take my own property back for myself. I own Minecraft in the specific capacity I agreed to--just a perpetual license for myself, no more than one person playing at a time, no piracy, never even looked it up on all those sites only the Russian search engines can parse. Yeah that's what "must have happened", someone put a ж in there, it didn't compile, Минкрафт. MS database failure, that's the mistake they didn't make. Yeah that makes sense it's a Russian plant getting children to play indoors only, fake TNT fake water fake fire, play video games and become overweight in elementary, obese in sophomore year of High School. US Army complains about this, all these recruits are busted, nearsighted from screens, fat, flat-footed, everyone has a 1-in-1000000 condition that requires favoritism, never gotten burned, never scraped their knees, nothing. When I was a kid I had some wound somewhere most of the time. Like they even made the clothing with patches in the elbows and knees not because that would be any protection but to get the clothing to last the year.
- 13of40 4y ago
  When I was about 13 years old, a retired engineer (slash wizard) who was friends with my mom gave me a 25,000 volt step-up transformer. Why any adult would do that is beyond me, but I was always very safe with it and managed to do a lot of cool experiments without killing myself. I let my friend borrow it, though, and his brain was calibrated a little bit differently as far as risk behavior, etc. He ended up shocking himself multiple times just because he'd do things like reach over and reposition the leads when the (freaking two inch) plasma arc died out.
  - VLM 4y ago
    Probably a neon sign transformer. The tube won't ionize until tens of thousands of KV but when it does light off, the resistance of the plasma drops to practically nothing compared to the excellent insulator it is when not ignited. Neon tubes are negative resistance devices, 25KV at zero current vs maybe 10 mA at 300 V after it ignites is a resistance of negative 30K or so. The point is a lot of EE work goes into the magnetic design of the transformer such that it current limits to some specified value. If you use a core material and shape that'll saturate at 10 mA but a ratio of number of turns such that it'll output 25 KV as long as the current is roughly zero, that would make a good neon sign transformer. Much like alcohol there is no minimum safe harmless amount of current thru the heart, but if you have what by neon transformer standards is a very low current transformer, like limited to 5 mA or so, that might be a low enough current to only kill like 0.0001% of the population or whatever. A kid will probably be fine. An old person with heart problems, maybe not so much.
oh_my_goodness 4y ago
We don't have much hair because we'd just keep burning it off anyway.

zabzonk 4y ago

My own worst experience with fire was with a Primus stove (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primus_stove https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primus_stove) when I was about 14. I'd squirted the priming meths alcohol from a squeezy bottle on to the stove and lit it. But then (because alcohol burns with a near-invisible flame I thought it had gone out, so I squirted more on, then ... boom! Squeezy blew open, sending burning meths everywhere. Luckily alcohol doesn't burn at a high temperature, so only all the skin on my hands peeled off. And this is no criticism of the Primus, just wittlessness on behalf of 14-year-old me. I don't suppose kids get to do this sort of stuff these days?

genewitch 4y ago
I show my kids by doing the same stupid stuff i did as a teen and how "dangerous" it is. Empty bottle of isopropyl alcohol? shake it, hold an electric or regular lighter over the opening - foomf. shake, foomf. shake, foomf. Over and over. The fire doesn't burn the liquid, but the vapor created by shaking the container. try explaining how a gas engine works to someone that doesn't understand how vapor burns but liquid doesn't. My latest "prove something" was taking my brightest flashlight and putting it flush against the bottom of a clear container of peanut butter in a dark room. When you shut off the flashlight, the peanut butter fluoresces. It "glows in the dark" for a short time. really cool. this whole PDF is whimsically old, but it has some good experiments nonetheless.
daniel-cussen 4y ago
They play Minecraft. Which I think is a great game, or was when I played it, I bought when I had no money, it was I think $40, and was very satisfied. I wanted to play it again see what had changed but Microsoft didn't honor my purchase, they wanted me to buy it again. Obviously not in so many words but dude they have hundreds of UI UX people they A/B test everything. They fucking know. They fucking know. It may have been a mistake (there is literally a 0 probability of this), all the same, I went through the whole protocol, did the backup option, the works. Totally agree that piracy is a service problem. Self-service. If I feel like playing Minecraft again I won't steal it, wrong word--seize it, take my own property back for myself. I own Minecraft in the specific capacity I agreed to--just a perpetual license for myself, no more than one person playing at a time, no piracy, never even looked it up on all those sites only the Russian search engines can parse. Yeah that's what "must have happened", someone put a ж in there, it didn't compile, Минкрафт. MS database failure, that's the mistake they didn't make. Yeah that makes sense it's a Russian plant getting children to play indoors only, fake TNT fake water fake fire, play video games and become overweight in elementary, obese in sophomore year of High School. US Army complains about this, all these recruits are busted, nearsighted from screens, fat, flat-footed, everyone has a 1-in-1000000 condition that requires favoritism, never gotten burned, never scraped their knees, nothing. When I was a kid I had some wound somewhere most of the time. Like they even made the clothing with patches in the elbows and knees not because that would be any protection but to get the clothing to last the year.
13of40 4y ago
When I was about 13 years old, a retired engineer (slash wizard) who was friends with my mom gave me a 25,000 volt step-up transformer. Why any adult would do that is beyond me, but I was always very safe with it and managed to do a lot of cool experiments without killing myself. I let my friend borrow it, though, and his brain was calibrated a little bit differently as far as risk behavior, etc. He ended up shocking himself multiple times just because he'd do things like reach over and reposition the leads when the (freaking two inch) plasma arc died out.
- VLM 4y ago
  Probably a neon sign transformer. The tube won't ionize until tens of thousands of KV but when it does light off, the resistance of the plasma drops to practically nothing compared to the excellent insulator it is when not ignited. Neon tubes are negative resistance devices, 25KV at zero current vs maybe 10 mA at 300 V after it ignites is a resistance of negative 30K or so. The point is a lot of EE work goes into the magnetic design of the transformer such that it current limits to some specified value. If you use a core material and shape that'll saturate at 10 mA but a ratio of number of turns such that it'll output 25 KV as long as the current is roughly zero, that would make a good neon sign transformer. Much like alcohol there is no minimum safe harmless amount of current thru the heart, but if you have what by neon transformer standards is a very low current transformer, like limited to 5 mA or so, that might be a low enough current to only kill like 0.0001% of the population or whatever. A kid will probably be fine. An old person with heart problems, maybe not so much.

oh_my_goodness 4y ago

We don't have much hair because we'd just keep burning it off anyway.