Timeline for Make fire with a potato, salt, and toothpaste?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
14 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 22, 2011 at 8:44 | answer | added | Lennart Regebro | timeline score: 3 | |
| Jul 22, 2011 at 8:37 | comment | added | Lennart Regebro | The half-naked girl clinched it as fake for me. A genuine "hey look what I can do"-chemistry-nerd wouldn't include that. The fire would be fun enough in itself. | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 16:56 | comment | added | Chad | @Hendy - Its a video and the resolution is not great but I bet if you doused a few cotton balls in a bit of alchohol and lit them them flame would look similar in color and effect. The lack of soot from the inital flame makes me think that there was some sort of clean burning accelerant anyway. Cotton burns pretty sooty in my experience | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 16:48 | comment | added | Hendy | @Chad: if alcohol were involved, then yes, we've got quite a different scenario! | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 15:46 | comment | added | Chad | @Hendy actually cotton is pretty flamable if it is dry and especially flamable if it has been dipped in alchohol. | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 14:23 | comment | added | Oddthinking♦ | @Ham, watching the video it appears to be sparks and/or heat from the current running between the ends of the wires, that touch the cotton wool. | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 13:45 | comment | added | Hendy | I'm quite skeptical, but think the idea is spoofing the fact that you can generate current from a potato (LINK). But... there's no mention of needing different metals, which is key, and as @Oddthinking pointed out, two of the same wire terminating in the same solution won't do anything. Also, powering an LED != enough potential difference to arc and light a piece of cotton. | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 10:22 | comment | added | Thursagen | What is causing the fire? The potato and the salt? The toothpaste being a fuel? | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 3:34 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackSkeptic/status/93886419411533824 | ||
| Jul 21, 2011 at 2:33 | comment | added | Oddthinking♦ | Argh, I want to jump up and down saying "Fake! Fake!" but there are all these annoying expectations of evidence here. Bah. (Exit stage left muttering about both wires being treated identically, so there is no "potential difference", so there is no electrical current, so no spark.) | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 1:20 | comment | added | Hendy | @Denys P.: I kind of rewrote this, as I found the video I think you watched along with some references, and think it's a perfectly legitimate question for this site. I see this is your first activity here, and so I hoped to keep your question alive (I believe it's old form would have been closed). Spend some time looking at some other questions so you get a feel for what kind of quality is expected. Welcome to skeptics.SE! | |
| Jul 21, 2011 at 1:19 | history | edited | Hendy | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added source, basically rewrote so it wouldn't get closed
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| Jul 21, 2011 at 0:18 | comment | added | going | Can you please provide a link to the video and also some information as to what part of the video you think is fake so it is clear in your question what is being addressed (that is try not to make your question dependent on the video). | |
| Jul 20, 2011 at 22:47 | history | asked | Denys P. | CC BY-SA 3.0 |