ABSTRACT
Fires, as chaotic and irreproducible as they may appear at first glance, can be understood through careful observation and the application of fundamental scientific principles. While holding out the promise that science can explain fire, Michael Faraday's observation also means that fire is an extremely complicated phenomenon and therefore difficult to understand and explain. Rumford fireplaces are tall and shallow to reflect more heat and have streamlined throats to eliminate turbulence and carry away the smoke with little loss of heated room air. Quantitative treatment of fire dynamics began during World War II when Sir Geoffrey Taylor described air entrainment in plumes above ditches filled with burning gasoline, which he used to clear fog from runways. Practical mathematical models of fire, however, did not become possible until the advent of sufficient computing power to simultaneously solve for the variables involved in fluid dynamics, heat transfer, radiation, and chemical reactions.
