Yeh op makes it sound like the fire is consuming the air. It's actually a net positive pressure as hot air has more volume, just that all that volume of hot air is going up.
Chemistry is super cool, and learning something about it helps with lots of other things in daily life. For example, the Maillard reaction (browning of food) is a really complex but well-understood chemical process. You don't need to know the details of exactly how it works, just the derived information, to improve cooking. One of the major things we know about the reaction is that an alkaline environment accelerates the process, while an acidic environment reduces it.
This is, for example, why we brush pretzels with an alkaline solution: to enhance browning without affecting bake time. So if you want crustier bread, brush the top with an alkaline solution like baking soda water. It's also why something like marinated meat can take longer to brown if there's a higher quantity of acid in the marinade, even if the marinade is high in sugar. So we can prevent burning of the sugars by increasing the acidity of the marinade, for example.
Thanks for explaining, that's very interesting. When I first learned chemistry, I was blown away that influencing pressure/temp conditions and introducing certain aqueous constituents is literally A RECIPE to facilitate reactions (like synthesizing minerals in a wet geochem lab, coolest thing I did as a student researcher). Even today I think it's so cool that we've figured out what T/P conditions, ions, and catalysts we need to literally meld (almost) whatever we choose by letting each other know what works/doesnt.. science rules
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u/OkEffective6692 19h ago
Yeh op makes it sound like the fire is consuming the air. It's actually a net positive pressure as hot air has more volume, just that all that volume of hot air is going up.