Plasma lighters — as their name indicates — use plasma in place of burning butane. Plasma — our universe’s most common state of matter — is a gas that’s been Keep reading
Tag: combustion
Soyuz Exhaust
Here, a Soyuz rocket takes off in 2023, carrying three of the Expedition 70 crew to the International Space Station. This initial stage of the Soyuz launch vehicle uses four Keep reading
Searching for Stability in Cleaner Flames
Spiking natural gas power plants with hydrogen could help them burn cleaner as we transition away from carbon power. But burners in power plants and jet engines can be extremely Keep reading
Exciting a Flame in a Trough
A viewer sent Steve Mould his accidental discovery of this odd flame behavior. In these 3D-printed troughs, a flame lit in lighter fluid will rocket around the track repeatedly as Keep reading
Farewell, Saffire!
After eight years and six flight tests, NASA said a fiery farewell to the Spacecraft Fire Safety Experiment, or Saffire, mission. Each Saffire test took place on an uncrewed Cygnus Keep reading
Parting a Flame
A sheet of flame splits around a cylinder in this Gallery of Fluid Motion poster. Looking at the image sequences, you can see how the flames lift up as they Keep reading
The Best of FYFD 2023
A fresh year means a look back at what was popular last year on FYFD. Usually, I give a numeric list of the top 10 posts, but this year the Keep reading
Exploding a Bubble
In this high-speed video, artist Linden Gledhill ignites a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen contained within a soap bubble. As neat as the video is, I decided to take a Keep reading
Exascale Simulations
Capturing what goes on inside a combustion engine is incredibly difficult. It’s a problem that depends on turbulent flow, chemistry, heat transfer, and more. To represent all of those aspects Keep reading
Burning Virtual Forests
Wildfires are growing ever more frequent and more destructive as the climate crisis worsens. Unfortunately, simulating and predicting the course of these fires is incredibly difficult, requiring a combination of Keep reading