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
Tag: fire
Inside the Fire Lab
Fire plays an important role in nature, one with which humanity must live without controlling fully. After several disastrous historic wildfires in the American West, the U.S. Forest Service established Keep reading
Understanding Wildfire
Wildfires are an ongoing challenge in the western United States, where droughts and warmer conditions have combined with a century of fire suppression to form perfect conditions for monstrous fires. It’s Keep reading
Fiery Backdraft
Combustion is ultimately a chemical reaction, and like any chemical reaction, it requires the right balance of ingredients. The only way to completely exhaust the reaction is to have the Keep reading
Tornadoes, Fire, and Ice
It’s time for another look at breaking fluid dynamics research with the latest FYFD/JFM video! This time around, we tackle some geophysical fluid dynamics, like listening to the sounds newborn Keep reading
Putting Out Fires
Fires in large, open spaces like aircraft hangers can be difficult to fight with conventional methods, so many industrial spaces use foam-based fire suppression systems. These animations show such a Keep reading
The Blue Whirl
We wrote earlier this year about the discovery of a new type of fire whirl – the blue whirl – but now the authors have published video of the blue whirl Keep reading
“Catacomb of Veils”
Burning Man’s “Catacomb of Veils”, the largest sculpture burned in the 2016 event, produced a series of smoke tornadoes as it blazed. Like dust devils or fire tornadoes, these vortices are Keep reading
The Blue Whirl
Researchers studying the use of fire whirls to burn off oil spills have discovered a new type of fire whirl – the blue whirl. Their results are currently reported in Keep reading
Water in Oil
Pouring water on an oil fire is a quick way to cause almost explosive results. Since water is denser than oil, it quickly sinks to the bottom of a container, Keep reading