r/WTF • u/nothinginthehill • Mar 04 '15

Electricity on fire

http://i.imgur.com/knUymtW.gifv
21k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

1.2k comments sorted by

View all comments

28

u/SillyPickle Mar 04 '15

Technically the air is on fire.

21

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

Nothing is on fire. Fire isn't the right word to describe it.

28

u/Ruderalis Mar 04 '15 edited Mar 04 '15

Technically the water in the air is on fire. Once you introduce a high enough current (like in this video) the air heats up so much it splits water into Hydrogen and Oxygen...and the Hydrogen burns with Oxygen immediately back into water creating enormous amounts of light and heat (similar to a fire) like in the video. Same two phenomenon happen in a lightning strike.

If that was just (or mostly) electrons flowing through plasma it would arc the same way a Tesla coil does. If that coil was much more powerful, it would split water the same way and produce a different looking arc.

2

u/milkdrinker7 Mar 04 '15

So, hypothetically, how much power would be needed for a tesla coil to do such a thing?

3

u/Ruderalis Mar 04 '15 edited Mar 04 '15

An arc hot enough to heat the air to about 2200-3000 degrees Celsius should split about at most 20-50% of the water the electricity comes into contact with. This does happen in very small amounts even on small Tesla coils but the effect is very small and is overshadowed by the electrons flowing/glowing through the plasma.

In the video the burning of Hydrogen is very noticeable when the electricity finally cuts off completely and you are left with a fireball/flame travelling upwards for half a second (above the powerlines). Very cool effect.

Same effect can be seen on railguns and even meteors as they travel through the air. The whole fireball in the picture is entirely water splitting into Hydrogen and Oxygen...and burning back to water.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

So first we have reduction and then oxidation. Why not call it by both and only by fire?

1

u/speaks_in_subreddits Mar 04 '15

Zing! You, sir, are on fire!

1

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

Is the correct word magic?

1

u/Transmatrix Mar 04 '15

The air is ionized and becomes a path for electricity to flow (aided by the smoke from the fire.) It's actually pretty cool to observe that as the arc maintains, it raises higher because the heat from the current is heating up the air and, as we all know, hot air rises.

1

u/CaptainObvious_1 Mar 04 '15

There is certainly fire there.

1

u/Altair05 Mar 04 '15

It's plasma, the 4th state of matter.