| >"these people are rank amateurs, don't try this at home"
| >
| >The following is not really as scary as it sounds, you've read the email,
| >now visit the website and see the movie. (for those of you out there that
| >do not have web access to visit this site, I do have many of the photos and
| >several movies documenting that this actually took place)
| >
| >Our subject today is lighting charcoal grills. One of our favorite
| >charcoal grill lighters is a guy named George Goble (really!!), a computer
| >person in the Purdue University engineering department.
| >
| >Each year, Goble and a bunch of other engineers hold a picnic in West
| >Lafayette, Indiana, at which they cook hamburgers on a big grill. Being
| >engineers, they began looking for practical ways to speed up the
| >charcoal-lighting process.
| >
| >"We started by blowing the charcoal with a hair dryer," Goble told me in a
| >telephone interview. "Then we figured out that it would light faster if we
| >used a vacuum cleaner."
| >
| >If you know anything about (1) engineers and (2) "guys" in general, you
| >know what happened: The purpose of the annual barbeque shifted from
| >cooking hamburgers to seeing how fast they could light the charcoal.
| >
| >>From the vacuum cleaner, they escalated to using a propane torch, then an
| >acetylene torch. Then Goble started using compressed pure oxygen, which
| >caused the charcoal to burn much faster, because as you recall from
| >chemistry class, fire is essentially the rapid combination of oxygen with a
| >reducing agent (the charcoal). We discovered that a long time ago,
| >somewhere in the valley between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (or
| >something along those lines).
| >
| >By this point, Goble was getting pretty good times. But in the world of
| >competitive charcoal-lighting, "pretty good" does not cut the mustard.
| >
| >Thus, Goble hit upon the idea of using - get ready - liquid oxygen. This is
| >the form of oxygen used in rocket engines; it's 295 degrees below zero and
| >600 times as dense as regular oxygen. In terms of releasing energy,
| >pouring liquid oxygen on charcoal is the equivalent of throwing a live
| >squirrel into a room containing 50 million Labrador retrievers. On Gobel's
| >World Wide Web page (the address is http://ghg.ecn.purdue.edu/),
| >you can see actual photographs and mpeg video of Goble using a bucket
| >attached to a 10-foot-long wooden handle to dump 3 gallons of liquid oxygen
| >(not sold in stores) onto a grill containing 60 pounds of charcoal and a
| >lit cigarette for ignition. [Special note: Be sure the ignition source is
| >ready before pouring the LOX - if not, each LOX soaked
| >charcoal bricket would have the explosive force of a stick of dynamite.]
| >
| >What follows is the most impressive charcoal-lighting I have ever seen,
| >featuring a large fireball that according to Goble, reached 10,000 degrees
| >Fahrenheit. The charcoal was ready for cooking in - this has to be a world
| >record - 3 seconds.
| >
| >There's also a photo of what happened when Goble used the same technique on
| >a flimsy $2.88 discount-store grill. All that's left is a circle of
| >charcoal with a few shreds of metal in it. "Basically, the grill
| >vaporized," said Goble. "We were thinking of returning it to the store for
| >a refund."
| >
| >Looking at Goble's video and photos, I became, as an American, all choked
| >up with gratitude at the fact that I do not live anywhere near the
| >engineers' picnic site. But also, I was proud of my country for producing
| >guys who can be ready to barbecue in less time than it take for guys in
| >less-advanced nations, such as France, to spit.
| >
| >Will the 3-second barrier ever be broken? Will engineers come up with a
| >new, more powerful charcoal-lighting technology? It's something for all of
| > us to ponder this summer as we sit outside, chewing our hamburgers, every
| >now and then glancing in the direction of West Lafayette, Indiana, looking
| >for a mushroom cloud.
-- withheld C. L'withheld dcl@clearlight.com http://www.clearlight.com/~dcl