What is Fire?

Oh! Uma has baked a cake for the birthday boy! Do you want to light the candles, Uma? But it looks like Uma has no fire. Have you ever thought about... The Meaning of "Fire" and asked yourself how our lives would be different without it? Fire is like air (...), water (...) and earth (...) an important basic element. Without these basic materials, life on earth would hardly be possible. Even though the sun is not a fireball - because to burn, it would need much more oxygen - it creates warmth and light on earth. The sun is really hot. At it's center, it's over TEN THOUSAND degrees Farenheit! It's a good thing that we are almost a hundred million miles from the sun. This keeps us pleasantly warm here Sometimes though, it gets really hot... and that can be dangerous. The heat from the sun can cause dryness on earth, for example, in the forest. If grass and leaves are too dry from the sun, they only need a little spark (...) and a forest fire can break out. However, fire can also be caused by lightning or volcanic eruptions. A long time ago, fire seemed threatening to the people who lived with it. But, at some point they learned that fire can be very useful for them as well. They made fire circles with wood, and this changed things for them. They learned to understand, and control the fire (...) ...but what did they do when that fire eventually goes out? Did they need to wait for lightning to strike a tree? At first, they really did. Then, they learned that they could make a SPARK by hitting two rocks together. One of them was flint and the other was pyrite two types of rocks that when you collide them... make SPARKS With this, people coud start their OWN fires. As people learned more about fire, more possibilities were created to use it. The fire plow for example, is a wooden stick that is put on a board and turned quickly between your hands. The board on the bottom has a small indent, which is where the stick is placed. This is important, because it helps to create heat and wood dust... and eventually fire! The bow drill works similarly. Instead of using hands, a bow and cord is used. The rod can rotate much faster this way, and doesn't take long before fire erupts! Much much later, specifically in eighteen twenty-three, the first lighter was invented by a German chemist. Only four years later, an English pharmacist invented the match. Today we even use candle lighters. Well, did they light the candles on the cake yet? Before we take a look, let's see a summary of the evolution of fire. We started by learning about fires in forests (..) and ended with a lighter! The birthday boy has already blown out the candles by now (...) right? What are they waiting for? Lightning to spark their candles? Well, they will be waiting for a while then! And anyways (...) if it starts lightning (...) they should probably head inside. But you knew that!