Chemistry Is Fast! — Joseph Susanka

"The dye? Well...that just makes it look pretty."

So, here's a little life-hack that might be unique to my family (though I seriously doubt it):

If you need to know where you put/hid the matches, just ask David (Son #4). He'll know. And he'll probably be able to tell you how many are left unspent. And if you ask very nicely and without a hint of recrimination? He can certainly tell you how many of them he struck himself. (In fairness, this is more closely tied to David of the Past than to Present David. He has done a great job of curbing his innate pyromaniacal tendencies in recent years.)

All of which brings me -- somewhat inexplicably, I realize, and with the great assistance of Laughing Squid -- to these videos of matches burning in super slo-mo. (Also, I'm not sure what "Summertime" has to do with any of this. But I'm not complaining.)

"Chemistry is fast!"

Subscribe! http://bit.ly/ACSReactions To fire up the grill or the gas stove, we often reach for a match. It turns out there's a lot of chemistry going on to make those little wooden wonders work. The best way to find out about the chemistry of burning matches is to watch it in ultra-slow motion.

Towards the end, she mentions the folks over at UltraSlo, from whence came the original clip. So I hunted it down, of course, and it is so very, very COOL! ...and now I probably know where David gets it from. (SIGH.)

This is a macro sequence of a match burning in slow motion. It was shot @ 4000 FPS using a Phantom Miro 4 camera with a bellows mounted on the lens to get in to an extreme macro mode. As you can see this is an extremely tight shot.

Photo via Visual Hunt