 |
|
A GenePoool.com Essay
Fire Walking
It was third grade.
My gym teacher was carrying a bucket full nearly to the top with water, and we were told to stand back and observe a demonstration of something called inertia. Mindful of the possibility that we were all about to get wet, we gave the teacher plenty of room. He spun rapidly in a circle until the bucket was perpendicular with the ground.
Remarkably, none of the water spilled out.
This was something akin to a magic trick as far as we were concerned, up until the teacher explained how it worked and why none of the water came out. He could have told us he kept the water from spilling with mind rays and we just might have believed him. (I don't remember why inertia was important to gym class, unfortunately. Maybe the point was it's okay to run with a bucket of water provided you don't stop.)
The lack of water spillage was, for a third grader, at least, counter-intuitive. It only made sense when the larger scientific picture was presented.
Which brings me to fire walking.
We all understand that it's not a good idea to touch something hot. I personally learned this when I was very young after pulling a hot iron onto my hand. Likewise, any of us that have been to a barbeque are familiar with coals, and it's pretty clearly understood that one doesn't pick them up when they're red and emitting enough heat to cook our burgers.
So let's take another scenario.
You sign up for a course in self-assertion. One of the basic tenets of the course it that by believing something to be so, will be so.
Your life will improve the moment you harness the power of your mind to change your life. In other words, mind over matter. And best of all, this power is all within our grasp, we need only learn how to harness it.
To illustrate the power of your own mind, at the conclusion of the course your entire class is brought outside where there is a bed of hot coals. The claim being made is that by believing you will not be burned, you will be able to walk across the coals and come out the other side unscathed. It's physical, demonstrable proof that just by thinking something can be so, it WILL be so, because everyone knows you just don't touch really really hot things.
So you try it. Remarkably, you are not burned. Clearly, you have been able to will yourself invincible to the heat of the coals.
Right?
No, not really.
This is not all that different from the inertia demonstration, except there's nobody on the other side of the coals explaining how it works.
The issue here is the difference between temperature and heat, or, more specifically, thermal energy.
Two different objects may be the same temperature, but have a different capacity to retain that heat energy. For example, if you heated up a cooking grill to the same temperature as the coals, you would burn yourself. Badly. Why? Metal has a much higher heat capacity than coals do.
Consider how long it takes to heat up a metal pan until it glows red, as compared to how long it takes to get a coal red-hot. The act of heating up an object is essentially nothing more than adding energy TO that object. Metal takes longer to heat, and so, contains more heat energy.
The other half of the equation is conductivity. Some compounds transfer heat more efficiently than other compounds.
This should be obvious to anyone who has ever used a potholder. The potholder is a poor conductor of heat, which is why you don't get burned when you touch a hot pan. Likewise, the air inside the oven, which is the same temperature as the pan in the oven, does not burn you because it is also a poor conductor. If you want to test this, hold a flame up to one end of a piece of coal, while holding the other end, for, say, a minute. Now try the same thing with a fork. You will probably not even feel the coal get warm, but the fork will heat up quite well.
So what's really happening when we're fire walking?
1: The coals, which have been heated up to around 1200 degrees, are emitting much of that energy into the air-- which is why we cook with them in the first place. Coals have a very low heat capacity. Air does too, which is why the hot air doesn't burn us.
2: We walk slowly and steadily across the hot coals, but because the coals are poor heat conductors, we do not get immediately burned on contact. By making our contact brief, we avoid cooking ourselves.
3: Our bodies have a fairly high heat capacity, similar to water. This means our feet can absorb heat better than coals can, ergo, our feet are actually cooling down the coals. This is evident by the dark footprints we leave behind in the glowing embers.
That's really all there is to it. It's obviously counter-intuitive, but, like the bucket of water, it's easy to understand once the physics are introduced.
Mental preparation is important in fire walking
only insofar as it's a good idea to not panic when walking across
the coals. But there is no mind-over-matter issue involved; the
matter in question doesn't really care what you're thinking about.
It's still not going to burn you.
© 2000, Gene Doucette
| |
|