Fire Piston
Produced by the National STEM Centre and the Institute of Physics, this video demonstrates how compressing a gas increases its temperature.
A small piece of cotton wool is placed into the bottom of a narrow plastic tube. When the air is rapidly compressed by a piston, the air temperature increases and the cotton ignites. The 'fire piston' can be used to illustrates the transfer of energy, kinetic theory and Charles' law.
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More like this
Resource author
Resource by: National STEM Centre
Collections
The resource is part of National STEM Centre,Institute of Physics
- Physics Demonstration Films
- Fire Piston
CPD links
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Physics for non-specialists: an introduction - impact awards available
Science Learning Centre South West
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Physics for non-specialists: an introduction
Science Learning Centre East Midlands
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Physics for non specialists: an introduction with impact award of #275
Science Learning Centre East of England - St Ivo School, Cambs
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Norfolk science conference raising attainment for all in science- impact award of #150
Science Learning Centre East of England - The John Innes Centre, Norfolk
Comments
I bought one of the camping versions, but have struggled to get it to work (and doesn't bode well if I ever really needed to use it).
The video shows really clearly how this works, and the slow mo is great. I'll have to try and get hold of the version of the fire piston shown here.
Brilliant! I have spent my life completely ignorant of such things!
Google informs me that 1) the "Hyman Fire Piston" is £26 from Timstar and 2) there are dozens of websites devoted to selling beautifully hand-carved wooden ones (for camping) and dozens more showing you how to construct your own from stuff you can get from your local hardware store.