In many of the shows, books, games I experience, whenever fire is shown as a weapon by itself, it always seems to have physical force. It will knock the enemy back or will slam them into the ground in shows or games like Avatar and Dark Souls. Can it could actually have force enough to push someone back? If not why is it portrayed that way all the time?
I could never actually imagine fire doing having enough power to slam someone back. I always think it would just go onto you or gloss over/around you and light you on fire.
In: Physics
Fire has some force because it causes air movement by thermal expansion.
But it’s definitively exaggerated, to actually slam someone back it has to be not a flamethrower-like fire, more like jet engine fire or a thermobaric weapon explosion.
Fire is i the first wikipedia sentence:
>Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products
So it is the reaction that combines stuff and produces heat. The flames it not necessary where the combustion happens it might just be hot gasses that is released but combustion can happen there.
If you heat a gas they expand, if you burn solids especially if the oxygen i in a solid to like in gunpowder you create a lot of gas.
So fire in itself is not a force it is a reaction but it will produce gasses that move away. rapid combustion in an enclosed space results in extreme pressure and is exactly how black powder firearms work.
If you take an old cannon and put in gun powder and ignite it will burn. The pressure wi not get as high as if a cannonball is in the barrel but if you were in front the release could rip your body apart.
a rocket is a combustion in a chamber where one side is open and it results in a continuous release of hot gas at high speed. So if that hit you it would be a force on you as well as a force on the rocket, that force is why a rocket fly.
Ideally, there is no combustion in the flame and all have occurred in the combustion chamber so what you see in a rocket exhaust it very hot gas not something that burn
A flame thrower release most of the time a liquid that burn in the atmosphere. So in a way a water gun that shoots out a liquid that can burn. They do not produce a lot of force because the combustion is slow. You would like for non burned liquid to hit the target and burn on them especially if its a bunker.
Sometime in WWII flame tank fired the flame thrower without igniting the liquid because the enemy surrenders quickly when they get the liquid on them and knew that the next shoot will be burning and they will get set alight. You might be afraid of bullies but you are terrified but fire. Often a flam tank fire a flame up in the air at a distance is enough to get the enemy to capitulate if they do not have good anti-tank weapons.
So a flame thrower is more like water gun/ water hose so there can be a force.
So if the in the series/game you can shoot fire out of you hand it can work as a rock with combustion in you hand so what you shoot is a cone of hot gas moving at very high speed and that will knock someone down.
If it is more like a flamethrower there is pressure from the liquid you fire out but it will move at a lot lower speed.
So fire is not a force but the result of the combustion can be moving gas that transfers a force. It can also be that the stuff that but is a liquid that is ejected at high speed so you have a force but it would be there if there was no ignition.
The heated gas expands which does push things outwards. This is how both guns and engines work. Films do show this to an even more dramatic effect but it is something that would happen in real life as well.
Fire is very hot, slightly ionized gas, or a very low-grade plasma. As such, it can have force if it’s flowing particularly fast; firemen have to deal with powerful drafts all the time.
Fire actually is hot glowing air. The force of fire in movies and books is exaggerated, but fire can develop physical force. The best example for that are jet engines.
Watch this: [https://youtu.be/bdl94J3AxZY?t=49](https://youtu.be/bdl94J3AxZY?t=49)
So when someone shoots flames at you you won’t be blasted away by the fire. You may be blasted away from the air pressure, but the fire would rather just cover and burn you.
Fire itself? No. But it can superheat air, which can expand and that can have tremendous force. As part of training, I was once in a controlled backdraft. There were about six of us crouched on the ground in a group, and a superheated pile of fuel smoldering at the other end of the room. It wanted to burn, but there was no oxygen. When the instructor opened the door to let in air, the blast pushed our entire group back about six inches.
Fire is the combustion (explosion) of materials from one state into another.
It is a violent, hot reaction which tears molecules apart, mixes them with air molecules and rebuilds them into new molecules. During this rebuilding, the volume of the new molecules is often much bigger than the volume of the original molecules
What this means is during combustion if you have a fast enough reaction with enough source material; then very quickly you will have a small volume become a big volume.
This changing volume ends up *pushing* the surrounding air out of the way… which is the “force” you are referring to
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