I’ve watched tons of YouTube videos where people pour gasoline onto bonfires and cause explosions ([here’s one such example](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbisRaEfsOY)).
But there are camping stoves you can buy (e.g. [this one]
(https://youtu.be/F0C2FepNBMA?t=279)), where you can fill it up with the same type of gasoline and you set these on fire and no explosion.
Why is one so dangerous and explosive and the other not?
In: Chemistry
The stove controls the flow of the fuel, when you dump it all of the fuel and fuel vapor can ignite rapidly.
for eli5 it’s like pouring out a bucket of water vs using a squirt gun. The squirt gun holds water just like the bucket, but it only lets a tiny amount of gas out at a time.
Gasoline evaporates very quickly, and gasoline vapor is extremely flammable, and will burn so fast that it explodes. When you pour a canister of gasoline on a pile of wood, there is a ton of gasoline just sitting there in the pile. So, a ton of it evaporates, so there is a ton of gasoline vapor in the air. All that vapor gets trapped in the crevices of the wood pile, so there is a ton of ultra-flammable gasoline vapor trapped in one place, so it burns explosively.
When you use gasoline in a camping stove, small amounts of gasoline vapor are released in a controlled manner. So, only a little bit burns at a time, so you get a controllable flame.
Everyone else has a good point, but there is one more facet to it – oxygen is required for combustion. Throwing gas on a bonfire in open air means unlimited oxygen for combustion – which means huge fire. The stove is controlling the gas/oxygen mixture to control the size of the flame.
Latest Answers