Fire in Microgravity

americanscientist.org

107 pointsMaxLeiter4 comments

It's weird how some phenomena can act so differently when the only variable you change is gravitational acceleration, even if it's still in a pressurized, oxygenated environment and it seems like a change in acceleration would only have superficial effects on a system's fundamental behavior.

It's nice to be surprised though.

I recall the Apollo 13 investigation involved trying to replicate the electrical fire that caused an explosion. They were able to nearly replicate but the timing seemed to be wrong, until they tried a microgravity test and were able to get the same timing.

Doesn't gravitational acceleration affect everything? Seems like if you remove or lessen something with such a large effect, you would expect everything to change.

It does, though its effect is usually small with respect to other ones like electromagnetic interactions in chemical reactions. But I forgot without gravity there are no traditional convection currents.

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