Fire on Ice

Is it a miracle that I'm going to talk about? No, it came to life on 17th July 2007 at CS&ES (Computer Science & Engineering Society) AGM (Anual General Meeting).

I was asked to display fire on a block of ice for the AGM. Yea, I did it at the end and it was better than expected. The simple theory behind was burning Trimethylbenzene (a.k.a. paint thinner) on top of ice. Hmm, it's easy to say than do. There were several challenges to face, i.e. what happens when ice melt down due to heat, how to stop spreading fire, how to ignite thinner automatically, how to make an ice cube with a carving to fill thinner, etc. Oh! boy it was a night mare to think all of this.

I tried with few prototypes and they all worked fine. The most interesting part was the igniter. I used two clutch pencil leads touching together with applied voltage of 12V to ignite a match stick. I created a simple stand to hold the thing (unfortunately it was burnt with the fire before I could take a picture) so that giving the power would do the job.

I'm greatly disappointed because no one had taken a picture of the burning ice. Anyway it was a great experience and I'm really happy with the success.

I need to mention few of my friends who helped me to make it a success. They are Rajika (one big thank to this guy), Dinesh (it was his idea to burn ice), Charith, Malaka and Tharindu (they helped me with the final touches).