Lighters, lighters, lighters!

I'm trying something new here: A Nina-esq blog post. Nina frequently posts work-in-progress from projects she's working on (e.g. partial scenes from her movie, possible character designs, etc). Well, I'm working on a new project too... Reactions, due out at the end of 2016, will be the sequel to Molecules, third in the trilogy of Elements, Molecules, Reactions.

Combustion is, of course, a very important class of reaction, and I plan to have a wide spectrum of combustion examples, from rusting (very slow) to gunpowder (pretty fast, but nowhere near as fast as some explosives). As a sort of warm-up project, I decided to see what it would look like if Nick photographed a model lighting a whole bunch of different cigarette lighters. The answer is this:

Frankly I'm a bit disappointed. They are all so...similar. But I guess that's to be expected since they are all burning butane in air. The only variety comes from "windproof" lighters that pre-mix the butane with air before it burns (and sometimes include little salt beads in the flame to color it red or green or whatever).

I'm not entirely sure what I was trying to achieve with this video, which probably explains why I didn't achieve it. Still, it has a certain pointless charm to it.