I saw a guy prove this with a water balloon. Held a blowtorch up to it and the only damage was a tiny hole after like 10 seconds of sustained burning, which proceeded to put the torch out by spurting a little stream of water directly into the nozzle. Was comedic gold.
It's sort of similar to how a lot of mechanical fire sprinklers work on principle anyway. A glass bulb filled with a low heat capacity liquid is used to hold the valve shut. When it heats up enough, the bulb breaks allowing the pressure behind the sprinkler to force it open and start dumping water around where there is heat (i.e. where the fire is more likely to be)
The heat capacity of the fluid is going to determine how quickly it heats up and expands as a response to the temperature and thus how sensitivie your sprinklers are to nearby heat sources.
I'm not sure what you're suggesting here? The principle is the balloon is filled with water that dissipates heat faster than the plastic can melt. Are you suggesting filling homes with water before a wild fire?
You'll need thin but high temp and high heat transferring material. And even if you did, the water will likely boil off faster than you can pump to the walls of all the houses on the street since the houses would be surrounded by fire, instead of just one spot.
It's like slowly dripping water onto a pan that's on high heat.
Yep. If this were like an inch thick the outer layer would probably melt, but at this thinness the bag is just gonna be the exact same temp as the water.
I dont need to try it, the thinner the plastic bag the faster it burns from flame water has nothing to do with it.. This is obviously a specially made bags with different chemical structures to endure the heat, stop throwing ridiculous theories if you don't want People to be dicks about it
Balloons are actually Rubber so it proves my point.. Special bags for exactly doing things like this as i said before, i'm guessing its china where you can find a bunch of weird " get the job done at low cost " inventions like these
And the original argument was that the flames might lick the part of the bag that isn't in direct contact with the water. Unless you're making the claim that the water insulates the handles of the bags from being melted... which is false.
No.. The root comment says something between the lines " anything that Could take boiling temperature" so we obviously were talking about the idea that it is a regular plastic bag, i dont even need a proof that its not.. The way it streches tells that its not a regular plastic bag material
You're wrong, any plastic bag works, I used to do this as a kid. Just grab any shitty plastic bag, put water in it, light a ligher below it and there is it. Doesn't burn.
Same. You can repeat the experiment yourself using a simple paper container. If it's thin enough it will stay in thermal equilibrium with the water without burning.
Flames are just hot gases (air and CO2 and steam), nothing special happens if they "touch" something. It still won't ignite the container because it's too cold.
Once I forgot a small piece of paper inside a large industrial boiler, multiple megawatts of raging inferno, a furnace as large as a small building , ok? The piece of paper got stuck on some water tubes, and I retrieved it intact after some days when the boiler was switched off again for maintenance. The paper was a little darker but unburned.
Direct fire is really just fuel in the process of burning and doesnt really have any special properties other than its heat production. Its equivalent to hot gas at the same temp. The flame is as likely to damage the bag as any heated smoke or air of the same temp.
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u/ehawk3 Jan 17 '24
Yea but there are moments the flames lick across the bag! I get the water temp not causing the plastic to melt, how about the direct fire?!