Why don’t some things burn?

CrowdScience

BBC

Science, Technology

4.8 • 985 Ratings

🗓️ 23 September 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

CrowdScience listener Alix has a burning question - what’s actually happening inside the flames of a campfire to make it glow? And why do some materials burn easily, while others refuse to light at all?

To find out, Alex Lathbridge travels to the Fire Research Centre at the University of Edinburgh to (safely) set various things ablaze. He learns about the fundamentals of fire and why things react differently to heat. He then heads to archives of the Royal Institution of London, to see an invention from the 19th century that can stop a fireball in its tracks: the miner’s safety lamp, which saved countless lives. And he speaks to a chemist about the science of flame retardants, and how even though they can make products less flammable, they may also have unintended consequences.

Presenter: Alex Lathbridge Producer: Anand Jagatia

Contributors: Dr Rory Hadden, University of Edinburgh Charlotte New, Royal Institution Dan Plane, Royal Institution Professor Richard Hull, University of Central Lancashire

Transcript

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0:25.4	calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:30.3	A bomb whose creation would tip the scales of global power, a nuclear physicist who sought to
0:38.8	redress the balance.
0:40.9	The bomb, a podcast from the BBC World Service.
0:45.0	Season 2 available now.
0:50.0	So seeing us we're here, can we set something on fire?
0:55.0	Of course, yeah, it would be a bit of a shame to not do that whilst you guys were here.
0:59.0	And you know, frankly, we like to show off a little bit.
1:01.0	Yes, okay, where do you start? Where do you start?
1:03.0	Hello and welcome to Crowd Science from the BBC World Service.
1:08.4	I'm Alex Safbridge and this is the show that answers your burning science questions, this week, quite literally.
1:15.0	So this is our room, which we were about to set fire to.
1:18.0	So you can see in the middle of the room we have the primary fuel load that we're going to set fire to and that's basically a mattress.
1:25.0	I can think of it like that.
1:27.0	In the room we've also got a bookcase, you can see at the back, there's a couch to the side.
1:32.0	So if I go ahead and like that. Yeah, let's do this.
	...

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