Mangiafuoco

How do fire eaters manipulate flames without burning themselves?

The manipulation of flames it’s aart that i fire eaters they have been practicing since the Middle Ages. The fire-breathing hey fire eater they are performers professionals which create the illusion of generating or eating flames. But beyond the illusions, the truth is that they really manipulate the flames with their bodies and, in doing so, endure the heat of the flame. How do they do it? With a lot of practice and experience, knowing the fuels used thoroughly and exploiting some simple principles of combustion. In short, it is a job that is really as dangerous as it seems, which in addition to possible burns also brings many risks and long-term consequences, such as lung diseases and poisoning and, in fact, it absolutely cannot be improvised.

Disclaimer: fire eaters and fire breathers are expert artists who practice these practices for years. Do not attempt to reproduce them at home.

How can fire be manipulated?

We can distinguish two types of fire manipulation, identifiable in the actions that the performer performs with his mouth: breathing fire or extinguishing it. Both of these actions are based on simple basic principles of the process combustion.

There combustion it is a chemical reaction in which the oxidation of an element occurs, which loses one or more electrons, and the reduction of another, which gains some. The result of combustion can be perceived with the heat and electromagnetic radiation, i.e flame.
To trigger combustion you need three ingredients:

  • A fuelsolid, liquid or gaseous and from which the reaction removes electrons;
  • An oxidizer that allows oxidation, for example oxygen;
  • A source of heatlike a spark or an already lit flame that triggers the process and the chain reaction.

Once heated, the fuel breaks down into elements such as hydrogen and carbon. The carbon in turn binds to the oxygen in the air through the oxidation process, and gives electrons to the oxygen. This generates carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O). It begins there chain reaction which continues until all three elements listed above are present at the same time. When the fuel or oxygen runs out, the reaction ends.

Fire artists use these simple, principled laws to manipulate flames. The fire-breathing they start combustion by reacting all three ingredients of the reaction: oxygen, fuel and torch. THE fire eater instead they interrupt combustion, subtracting one of the necessary elements: oxygen.

Fire breathers create flames by vaporizing the fuel

To generate fire, the performer fills his mouth with fuel – liquid or powder – and spits it onto a torch already lit and held about ten centimeters away from his mouth. The fire breather spits out the fuel vaporizing it with a certain opening of the lips, as if it were a spray. If we look closely at the performance we can in fact see the droplets of flammable material.

fire-breathing

The nebulized droplets catch fire the moment they, directed in the right direction, meet the flame. This creates a cloud of flame. The fuel is spat out as if it were a spray and this happens for a very specific reason.

There are types and types of fuel and each of them has its own volatilityi.e. the tendency to pass into the vapor state. For example, alcohol is a fuel with a lot of volatility: if it comes into contact with a match it catches fire very easily.
Contrary to popular belief, fire breathers do not use high volatility fuelsbecause there is too high a risk of flashback towards the mouth. They use fuels not very volatile. However, in order for the spit fuel to catch fire, it needs to come out of the mouth in the form of very small droplets, which increase the surface area of ​​the fuel exposed to oxygen and allow it to create the reaction. For this reason the fuel must be nebulized from the mouth.

Among the most used fuels we find keroseneliquid paraffin, naphtha with various additives but also solvents such as those used for paint or benzene. Some performers also use alcohols such as methanol, denatured alcohol or ethanol (the one that gets us drunk). All these fuels are toxic and for this reason they should absolutely not be ingested. For this reason, when the fire breather inserts fuel into his mouth, closes the pharynx with the tongue so as not to swallow it. It goes without saying but this stratagem is certainly not enough to avoid problems: fire breathers typically suffer from various health problems.

The feeders put out the flames by taking away oxygen

In addition to the fire breathers we also have the fire eaterwho put out the fire with their mouths. During this performance the flames are extinguished because oxygen is lacking in the combustion process. The performer inserts the torch into his mouth and closes his lips around it to isolate it, remove oxygen and stop the reaction.

One trick fire eaters use in this show is to keep their chin up and head back. The main purpose is to exploit a small principle of flame physics: thehot air rises upwards. According to this principle, the base of the fire eater’s torch is cooler than the flame rising to the top. Then the performers eat the fire by holding their head back, causing the fire to go upwards, to ingest the coldest part of the torch, minimizing the perception of heat.

Oxygen fire eater

There is also another practice that we don’t see: when fire eaters insert flame into their mouths, meanwhile, they emit airalmost as if blowing on the torch. In this way they try to push the flames as far out of the mouth as possible.

Pay attention (as much as possible) to safety

The truth is that the manipulation of fire is a very art dangerous. Fire eaters are not actually protected by any substance, nor do they manipulate cold flames. They simply follow very specific techniques that they practice for a long time before entering the scene.

They also follow safety rules and common sense. An example: never inhale when the flame is close to the mouth, to avoid a return of fire towards the body. For the same reason there must be particular attention to the wind, which must blow in the right direction to facilitate the flow of the flames. Another caution is do not wear clothes made of synthetic fibers because they catch fire more easily. For the same reason it is useful to style your hair so that it does not fall on your face.

For those who put out fire in their mouths, always useful advice is to not have a dry mouth, that is, to have a good amount of saliva to burn less. Also, after the fire cloud performance we often see fire eaters dry your lips to clean any fuel residues that could catch fire.

These precautions, needless to say, are necessary but not enough. A fire eater is typically riddled with skin irritation, dry mouth, stomach ulcers, and possible poisoning or pneumonia. There is even a form of pneumonia acute associated with the so-called “fire-eater’s lung”. It is an acute pneumonia caused by the continuous aspiration of flammable agents used by fire eaters, which are toxic. In some cases it can also be associated with one accidental inhalation. Cough, dyspnea, chest pain are the most frequent symptoms and it is certainly not unusual to find them in performers who play with fire.