California Fire and Life Read Online Free PDF

construction you got a jump on destruction.
    He’s right about this.
    He
rips
fire school.

11
    “Prometheus,” the little man in the tweed suit says.
    Jack’s like,
Pro-who?
And what the hell does it have to do with fire?
    The lecturer acknowledges the blank stares of the class.
    “Read your Aeschylus,” he says, adding to the general puzzlement. “When Prometheus gave
fire
to mankind, the other gods chained him toa boulder and sent eagles to pick at his liver for all eternity. If you consider what man has done with fire, Prometheus got off easy.”
    Jack had expected fire school to be taught by a fireman—instead he has this tweed-jacket professor named Fuller from the chemistry department of Chapman mumbling about gods and eternity and telling the students in a thick Irish accent that if they don’t understand the
chemistry
of fire, they can never understand the
behavior
of fire.
    First thing Jack learns in fire school is, What is fire?
    Nothing like starting with the basics.
    So …
    “Fire is the active stage of combustion,” the professor tells Jack’s class. “Combustion is the oxidation of fuel that creates flame, heat and light.”
    “So combustion is flame, heat and light?” Jack says.
    The professor agrees, then asks, “But what is flame?”
    The class’s reaction is basically,
Duhh
.
    It’s easy to
describe
flame—it’s red, yellow, orange, occasionally blue—but defining it is something else. Fuller lets the class sit with this for a minute, then he asks a very unprofessorlike question: “Are you telling me that no silly bastard in this room has ever lighted a fart?”
    Ahhh, says the class.
    Ahhh, thinks Jack. Flame is burning gas.
    “Burning
gases
,” Fuller says. “So combustion is the oxidation of fuel that creates burning gases, heat and light. Which begs what question?”
    “What is oxidation?” Jack asks.
    “Full marks for the surfer dude,” Fuller says. “What’s your name?”
    “Jack Wade.”
    “Well, Master Jack,” Fuller says, “oxidation is a series of chemical reactions that occur when an atom—that is,
matter
—forms a chemical bond with a molecule of oxygen. Now don’t you all wish you’d paid more attention in Chemistry 101?”
    Yes, thinks Jack. Definitely. Because Fuller starts drawing chemical equations on the board. While the chalk is screeching, Fuller’s saying, “In order for oxidation to occur, a combustible fuel—we’ll talk about fuel in a few minutes—and oxygen must come together. This is called an exothermic—that is, heat-producing—reaction.”
    He draws an equation : 2H 2 + O 2 = 2H 2 O + heat.
    “A basic oxidation reaction,” Fuller says. “When you combine hydrogen and oxygen, you get two molecules of water, and heat. Heat is measured in BTUs—British thermal units. One BTU is the amount of heatthat it takes to raise the temperature of one pound of water by 1 degree Fahrenheit. So the more heat you have, the greater the temperature you’re going to get. Put simply, the more BTUs, the hotter the fire.”
    Fuller continues, “Look, gentlemen, to sustain a fire you need to have three things working together: oxygen, fuel and heat. If you have no oxygen, oxidation obviously can’t take place—no fire. If you have no fuel, there is nothing to oxidize—no fire. If the fuel doesn’t contain enough mass of heat, then the fire dies out.”
    He strikes a match.
    “Observe,” he says. “We have oxygen, we have fuel, we have heat.”
    The match burns for a few seconds, then goes out.
    “What happened?” Fuller asks. “We had plenty of oxygen, but not a lot of fuel and not a lot of heat.”
    He strikes another match.
    “I will now attempt to burn down the classroom.”
    He holds the match to the metal desk.
    The flame makes a slight scorch on the metal, then burns out.
    “What happened?” Fuller asks. “We have oxygen, we have heat, it’s a big desk—plenty of fuel—where is our sustained fire?”
    “Most metals don’t