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Comment by bigethan | Hacker News Reader

Relatedly(?) When I had a diesel car, I bought and stored a small barrel of biodiesel in the basement of our apartment (saving like $0.05 a gallon!). I was told that diesel doesn't burn except under extreme pressure, and that you could throw a match into an open cup of diesel and it would just go out.

Never actually tested that out.

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You can throw a match into an open cup of cold diesel and it'll go out.

But if the cup gets hot, diesel vapour will start coming off the top, which will ignite. If you're unlucky it'll produce enough heat to vapourise more diesel, etc.

Also, if you let the cold diesel touch cloth, it'll get wicked up, and the diesel-soaked cloth will ignite really easily. That will in turn generate enough heat to etc.

The same applies to paraffin (although to a rather lesser extent). It's a great fuel for camping and sailing, because it's nearly inert... but only nearly so. A puddle of paraffin in the bottom of your boat isn't a problem. A puddle of paraffin spilt on your cabin upholstery is a serious fire risk.

Ah, fond memories of playing with candles. Make enough "wick" of thin metal wire, and at some point the flame will boil off gases from the candle/pool of melting paraffin wax. At this point, cheap glassware will likely crack from the heat -- spilling hot wax over the table, likely igniting it - best advice is to quench the flame before it gets to that. Or so I've heard.

Fun fact: standard cheapo tea lights make great fire lighters, because they burn reliably and provide a static heat source for a long period of time. Put one under a piece of wood and it'll most likely catch fire eventually.

A short time later the wax in the tea light melts. Than it boils. Then you get (briefly) a pillar of flame...

You might like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nL10C7FSbE

Great video, thanks. There's an interesting fact in there about them putting dye in heating oil to stop people putting it in their cars and avoiding diesel tax.

You can throw a match into an open cup of gasoline and it will go out (yes, I've tried it). That doesn't mean I don't treat it as the highly flammable fluid that it is. That includes not storing it in the basement where the gas furnace and it's pilot light live.

>> You can throw a match into an open cup of gasoline

Please, no one try this at home...

Crude still has all the fractions in it, including those prone to evaporating and producing a flammable fuel/air mixture. The toxic H2S discussed is also flammable, just to add to your problems.

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