How many engineers does it take?

Our subject today is lighting charcoal grills.  One of our favorite
charcoal grill lighters is a guy named George Goble (really!!), a
computer person in the Purdue University engineering department.
Each year, Goble and a bunch of other engineers hold a picnic in   
West Lafayette, Indiana, at which they cook hamburgers on a big grill.   
 Being engineers, they began looking for practical ways to speed up the
charcoal-lighting process.

"We started by blowing the charcoal with a hair dryer," Goble told   
me in a telephone interview.  "Then we figured out that it would light   
faster if we used a vacuum cleaner."

If you know anything about (1) engineers and (2) guys in general,   
you know what happened:  The purpose of the charcoal-lighting shifted
from cooking hamburgers to seeing how fast they could light the charcoal.

From the vacuum cleaner, they escalated to using a propane   
torch,then an acetylene torch.  Then Goble started using compressed pure 
oxygen, which caused the charcoal to burn much faster, because as you
recall from chemistry class, fire is essentially the rapid combination of 
oxygen with a reducing agent (the charcoal).

By this point, Goble was getting pretty good times.  But in the   
world of competitive charcoal-lighting, "pretty good" does not cut the   
mustard.

Thus, Goble hit upon the idea of using - get ready - liquid oxygen.   
This is the form of oxygen used in rocket engines; it's 295 degrees
below zero and 600 times as dense as regular oxygen. On Gobel's World Wide Web 
page (the address is http://ghg.ecn.purdue.edu/),you can see actual
photographs and a video of Goble using a bucket attached to a
10-foot-long wooden handle to dump 3 gallons of liquid oxygen (not 
sold in stores) onto a grill containing 60 pounds of charcoal and 
a lit cigarette for ignition.

What follows is the most impressive charcoal-lighting I have ever   
seen, featuring a large fireball that according to Goble, reached 10,000
degrees Fahrenheit.  The charcoal was ready for cooking in - this has to
be a world record - 3 seconds.
 
There's also a photo of what happened when Goble used the same   
technique on a flimsy $2.88 discount-store grill.  All that's left is a
circle of charcoal with a few shreds of metal in it.  "Basically, the grill
vaporized," said Goble.  "We were thinking of returning it to the   
store for a refund."

Looking at Goble's video and photos, I became, as an American, all   
choked up with gratitude at the fact that I do not live anywhere near the
engineers' picnic site.  But also, I was proud of my country for
producing guys who can be ready to barbecue in less time than it take for
guys in less-advanced nations, such as France, to spit.

Will the 3-second barrier ever be broken?  Will engineers come up   
with a new, more powerful charcoal-lighting technology?  It's something  
for all of us to ponder this summer as we sit outside, chewing our
hamburgers, every now and then glancing in the direction of West
Lafayette, Indiana, looking for a mushroom cloud.