Kinda like the square cube law.
I’ve never seen such a small flame, I think they can’t exist. Why? I don’t know.
Your intuition is correct and it’s quite simple really. A small fire cools down faster than it can keep/generate its own heat.
Surface area of the fire (which correlates with how quickly it cools) grows with the square of the size of the fire. Meanwhile volume of the fire (which correlates to how much heat it generates, how much fuel it is burning) grows with the cube.
At small sizes, the surface area can win out against the volume. However, because it grows with the cube, the volume eventually wins as the fire gets bigger. So a fire can only get so small.
meco03211@lemmy.world 1 day ago
SorteKanin@feddit.dk 1 day ago
Not kinda, exactly like it - it is just another example of it :)
Leviathan@fedinsfw.app 10 hours ago
What about alternate fuels?
SorteKanin@feddit.dk 9 hours ago
Considering coal is pure C, I can’t really imagine an alternate fuel that would change the math substantially