Amazing Experiment Actually Makes Black Fire! The Shadow Fire Experiment

Okay, today I'm going to teach you how to make dark

fire

, so to understand how to make a dark flame, first we have to understand what

fire

actually

is, so fire is what is known as partial plasma and what that means is that most of it is really hot gas, but a small percentage is

actually

ionized gas because it has gained so much energy that it has lost some of its electrons and the light from the fire comes from when those ions get their electrons back and release a photon from the light and therefore fire itself is a source of light, even when you illuminate with a brighter light source you still don't have a

shadow

behind it, let me show you so you can clearly see the

shadow

of my hand here, but you I can see that the fire does not form a Shadow at all and if you look very closely you can slightly see something behind the fire and you can tell a little that the fire is there but that is only because the fire heats the air around it and changes the way light passes through the air, bends the light a little bit, basically the same reason you see a mirage on a hot day, so that's basically what's happening here, like this which is not a shadow, but it is changing the refractive index due to heating the air and not only does it have no shadow, but if you place a light source behind it, the light from behind can easily pass through it and reach the camera, so you don't see that this is dimming the light behind. in fact, he's adding light to it and that

makes

a lot of sense because, like I said, fire is a source of light and then you see the light behind it and you also see the fire, but it doesn't get dimmer, it doesn't make the light.

The light behind him is dimmer, but is there a way to darken the fire? Is there a way to make it actually absorb the light instead of turning it off? So to make a dark fire or a fire that absorbs light, I need the help of a special type of lamp. and it is called a low pressure sodium lamp and this lamp emits only a specific wavelength of light, so it is a monochromatic light source, unlike this white light that simply emits the entire spectrum of colors. Well, this is a low pressure sodium vapor lamp. here, in here in there is a tube and in that tube there is some neon gas and you can see every few centimeters or so there are some dots here and those dots are actually metallic sodium and what happens when you apply a very high voltage to the ends here The sodium metal heats up because the neon gas inside heats up and gets hot enough to start vaporizing the sodium metal, then the sodium atoms start to ionize and ionize and recombine with electrons and in doing so they let out light, but it only turns on light in a specific wavelength range around 589 nanometers, they are actually two very close spectral lines, 589 and 589.6, but it is considered a monochromatic light source because those two wavelengths are very close together, so it basically lets out light of a single wavelength in a yellowish tone. orange range the strangest effect of a sodium vapor lamp has to be that it basically turns everything into a

black

and white film so i have here a tomato and my orange extension cord look what happens when i turn on the light sodium vapor and I turn off my normal light and everything is

black

and white so it's crazy looking at my own hands here they basically look black and white everything turns into a total shade of gray and the reason why this happens and turns everything black and white this way it is because it is a monochromatic light.

Basically, the only thing you can see is this yellow light or a minor shade of it, so everything in the room reflects a little bit of this yellowish light or absorbs it, so it looks a little darker, so the only How are we going to get a shadow if this fire can actually absorb this specific wavelength of light. Well, let's set our alcohol on fire. You can see that there is no shadow in this flame. Here light the alcohol and the fire. There's no shadow behind him either, but now let's go. Look what happens when I put this handkerchief soaked in salt water on it.

Look at this. See, you get black fire, so when I hit this, suddenly you see a shadow behind the flame and the flame also turns black, so I can tell you that. that what you're seeing now isn't a camera trick or anything, it actually looks like what you're seeing, it even looks cooler in person because it actually looks like black fire when I stick this on it, so I What's happening here is that this has sodium atoms and those vaporized sodium atoms can now absorb the wavelength of the light coming out of the sodium vapor lamp because it's the same wavelength, the same atoms and we basically create a fire that can absorb such cold light, okay, I have discovered something.

Even cooler than just sticking the tissue on it, if you splash it with sodium chloride water, this black flame comes out. Look at that black fire, it's totally black, so I have to say I've done it. I did a lot of

experiment

s on my channel and of all of them, this has to be one of my favorites. It's great to see it in person. It's cool to see the flame turn black. It looks like I'm watching a movie or something and there's a special effect happening in front of me this is so

amazing

it's not smoke there's no smoke coming out at all but this is black fire which is cool okay look at this black fire so it's definitely hot this isn't It is smoke but it is fire Hello everyone, thank you for watching another episode of the action laboratory.

I hope you enjoyed it if you hit the Subscribe button and hit the Bell to get notified when my latest videos come out and head over to actionlab.com yes I haven't checked out my subscribe box yet where you can do

experiment

s similar to what you see me do on my channel. Thanks for watching and see you next time.