Last Thursday, more than two dozen participants in a motivational workshop hosted by Tony Robbins burned their feet as they tried to walk the hot coals. What did these burn victims do wrong?
The Associated Press reports that most of the victims suffered second- or even third-degree burns. Meanwhile, the organizers of the event stressed in a statement that 6,000 people walked over the coals that day and remained unharmed. Let's talk a little about the physical side of firewalking and what you need to know in order not to get burned.
The first and foremost thing to understand is that walking on coals is not magic. It sounds like something obvious, but religious, mystical and paranormal explanations for this phenomenon have a centuries-old history and are still alive in seminars like Robbins' Unleash the Power Within (in which, by the way, people paid up to $ 2,000). Don't believe me? Then read what the seminar participants said about their firewalking experience.
“It's amazing what the mind is capable of if it’s in the right state,” said one participant. “You need to realize your inner strength and just concentrate on walking on fire,” announced the second.
Complete nonsense. It's not about the victory of reason over matter, but about the fundamentals of physics and the speed of movement over coals. The "secret" of firewalking is associated with such a physical property as thermal conductivity. When scientists talk about the thermal conductivity of an object, they mean its ability to transfer energy in the form of heat to another object with which it contacts. In this case, we are interested in the transfer of heat from hot coals to bare feet.
Coals, wood chips, and similar combustible materials are almost entirely carbon, and carbon is a poor conductor of heat. Most metals, for example, conduct heat much better than ember or a piece of wood. If you've ever burned yourself against a hot skillet, you can appreciate the thermal conductivity of the metal.
An additional protective barrier is a layer of ash covering the coals. Like the coals themselves, ash conducts thermal energy poorly (so bad that in the past it was sometimes used as insulating material in domestic glaciers). Keep in mind that the ash itself no longer gives off heat, and you will understand why walking on coals is, in principle, possible.
It is important to remember that the coals are still hot, and if you hesitate, you will definitely get burned. “Running is not necessary and is not recommended. The best method is brisk walking, in which each step takes no more than half a second, explains David Willey, a physicist at the University of Pittsburgh, who regularly demonstrates physics to students by walking on coals and broken glass and dipping his hand into molten lead. "That way, over 14 feet of travel, each foot will be in contact with the coals for about a second."
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It seems to me that the people who got burned on Thursday suffered precisely because they spent too much time "realizing inner strength" and "focusing on walking on fire", and not enough focus on getting out of the coals quickly …
