> > I've heard tales (maybe they are true, maybe not, I don't know) of pyromaniacs in college who would spray down their arms with hair spray, light it, and then run screaming through the halls waving their flaming arms in the air as a practical joke on the unwary. Supposedly, they suffered no harm from it, other than perhaps a little singed arm hair. Could this be true?
> >
> > Gri"and then there was something called 'shuba,' but I won't go into that"shny
>
> Depends. Did they have really blackened arms? ;)
>
> what the people coming up with these stories are thinking of is the old kids trick of dipping your hand in water, then in lighter fluid, then touch a candle. The lighter fluid (or benzene in the old days) burns cool and fast enough that the water protects the hand. The problem arises when adults try this. The hair that you've grown during puberty acts as a wick, and draws the fire right down to the skin and hurts like crazy. If someone sprayed hairspray on their arms and set themselves on fire, they'd burn up. Hairspray wouldn't protect you from the fire. if anything, it'd make the fire worse.

I beg to differ. I don't know what the physics of it are, but I did the hairspray thing in my crazy youth. I didn't cover my entire arms, or go running down a hallway or anything, but some friends of mine and I were goofing off with fire and we tried the hairspray on arms thing. I had arm hair at the time, and if I remember correctly, I didn't even burn that off. And yes, it was painless, and yes, it looked pretty cool to have a flaming forearm. Now, none of us left it lit for long-- maybe five to ten seconds. Perhaps that is why it worked out the way it did? As well, I do not remember what kind of hairspray we were using, although we did use hairspray and nothing else (no water underneath to cool it down or anything).

Don "Sorry I can't remember more details-- at the time, I wasn't too interested in the science of it. ;-)" Monkey