I’ve seen videos of people throwing firecrackers and dynamite and things like that into water and they still explode, but how do the fuses stay lit?
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Fire requires three things to burn, often called the *fire triangle*. You’ll often hear this phrased as “air, fuel, and heat”. Remove any one of the three, and the fire goes out.
The thing is, “air” is a bit of an oversimpilification. What fire really needs is an *oxidizer*: something to fuel the chemical process called *oxidation* characteristic of burning. As the name implies, most of the time the oxidizer is oxygen, and most of the time that comes from the air.
But the oxygen doesn’t *have to* come from the air. As long as a suitable oxidizer is available (and there’s enough fuel and heat to start or sustain the reaction), other substances can be used. Most common fuses actually infuse the cord with an oxidizer to make it more reliable: the fuse burns in a controlled way and at a predictable rate, and outside factors like moisture won’t affect it. This is considered an important safety feature: you can control how long the fuse will burn by measuring out a specific length, and it’s very hard to make it burn any faster or slower.
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