Can Fire have force, and if not then why is it portrayed that way in media?

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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

7 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

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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