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Kitchen Table Kibitzing 6/14/23: Blue Flame [1]

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Date: 2023-06-14  

Happy Birthday to the teaching tool that inspired many trips to the school nurse- the Bunsen burner!

mmm, propane

Ah yes, Chemistry class, where Phil Nowicki singed his eyelashes off.

In 1852, the University of Heidelberg hired Bunsen and promised him a new laboratory building. The city of Heidelberg had begun to install coal-gas street lighting, and the university laid gas lines to the new laboratory. The designers of the building intended to use the gas not just for lighting, but also as fuel for burners for laboratory operations. For any burner lamp, it was desirable to maximize the temperature of its flame, and minimize its luminosity (which represented lost heating energy). Bunsen sought to improve existing laboratory burner lamps as regards economy, simplicity, and flame temperature, and adapt them to coal-gas fuel. While the building was under construction in late 1854, Bunsen suggested certain design principles to the university's mechanic, Peter Desaga, and asked him to construct a prototype. Similar principles had been used in an earlier burner design by Michael Faraday, and in a device patented in 1856 by gas engineer R. W. Elsner. The Bunsen/Desaga design generated a hot, sootless, non-luminous flame by mixing the gas with air in a controlled fashion before combustion. Desaga created adjustable slits for air at the bottom of the cylindrical burner, with the flame issuing at the top. When the building opened early in 1855, Desaga had made 50 burners for Bunsen's students. Two years later Bunsen published a description, and many of his colleagues soon adopted the design. Bunsen burners are now used in laboratories around the world.[6]

I never worked in a lab where one of these was needed and it was probably just as well.

Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share a virtual kitchen table with other readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by to talk about music, your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper…. Newcomers may notice that many who post in this series already know one another to some degree, but we welcome guests at our kitchen table and hope to make some new friends as well.

I’ll be at the local Democrats’ booth at the Market tonight so I’ll be in later.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/14/2174717/-Kitchen-Table-Kibitzing-6-14-23-Blue-Flame

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