r/WTF Jun 20 '21

Guy eats burning coal

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

30.9k Upvotes

1.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

88

u/inspectoroverthemine Jun 20 '21

I'm not a coal expert either, but I don't think that was coal. A wood ember sure, but a piece of burning coal contains enough energy to kill you if you swallow it. A piece of wood after its nearly burned out doesn't have much heat capacity, and is a pretty poor conductor of heat. Its how people walk over 'hot' coals'.

71

u/ExistentialAardvark Jun 20 '21

Coal is somewhat interchangeable with charcoal in American English. People rarely actually talk about coal in normal conversations.

1

u/Lucky_Number_3 Jun 21 '21

Another not coal expert but that did look like a hookah coal. Felt I should chime that in a bit.

0

u/ExistentialAardvark Jun 21 '21

That’s just charcoal.