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« These are a few of my favorite blogs, pt. 2 | Main | Lost and found » Tuesday, May 8, 2007Out of the frying pan...There's a hot essay of a kind here, originally written by David Willey, he told me, and edited by his wife, Raven. (He is referred to in the third person.) David Willey, a professor of science at the University of Pittsburgh, participated in the world's longest firewalk in 1998 (Raven did, too) and also collected the data for the world's hottest firewalk in 1997. ("Michael McDermott placed both feet in the middle of the hottest part when the interior of that portion was at 1,813 deg F, as measured by a Fluke Model 51, k-type thermocouple.") Willey says the hocus pocus surrounding firewalking is... hocus pocus. He believes that the "mind over matter" image of firewalking is derived in part from lucrative self-help businesses that have incorporated it into their programs in recent years. It's just physics, see. He cites a paper (not online) in the Skeptical Inquirer, which also interviewed him here, and adds his own comment: Consider that both hardwood and charcoal are good thermal insulators. Wood was used on the handles of such things as saucepans and soldering irons to insulate them, before the advent of heat resistant plastics. Wood is just as good an insulator even when on fire, and charcoal is almost four times better as an insulator than is dry hardwood. Further, the ash that is left after the charcoal has burnt is just as poor a conductor as was the hardwood or charcoal, and is itself producing no further heat. Then there's the issue of how long those feet stay on the bed of coals: Conduction happens when energetic molecules, the hot coals, that are vibrating collide with more sedate molecules, the soles of the feet, thereby transferring energy to them, but the thermal conductivity of coarse charcoal is very small and that of skin or flesh is only about four times more. By comparison the thermal conductivity of most metals is several thousand times larger...." Debunking myths is never much fun, but I buy it. Posted by Evan Hughes at 06:08 PM
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