Talk:Airbending/@comment-76.24.189.176-20120121100340/@comment-4521003-20120212195854

One key problem: Fire cannot trap anything inside of it. It's not like, say, trapping dirt in water. You say that the Firebender would be bending the 'flames that contain the poison gas', but flames cannot contain the gas. The flames cannot trap the gas or the smoke, becaus the flames are not tangible. No matter how small of a flame, or how much you breath on it, the flame will not magically hold any of that gas. The gas will leave the flame just as quickly as it entered, and it will not turn the flame poisonous. It is impossible for the fire to hold poison, so you cannot make a 'poison flame'.

You mention the sub-atomic level that I brought up earlier, but you use it incorrectly. They would simply be giving the atoms the energy to cause electrons to jump around a little in their 'shells', which creates the light we see and the infrared light we feel, or forcing positive and negative charges apart to create a path for lightning. They would not be manipulating the atoms themselves.

Azula's flames are different because she can make the flames hotter and more intense. She is so driven and focused that her fire is also focused to the point where it turns blue. Have you ever used a Bunsen burner? When the burner is not adjusted properly, the flame is a flickering yellow-orange and is very weak, like a normal Firebender's flame. When you set the burner correctly, however, the flame becomes steady, focused, and more powerful, and it turns bright blue, just like Azula's fire. Same source of fire, different results, so the color does not rely on what is burning.

The color does have some correlation to the atoms in the air, but not in the way you think. This is where the two points above come together. Different atoms have different colors that they like to turn when 'excited'. They are not burning, they are simply elevated to a higher energy level momentarily before returning to their previous state by releasing the energy as light. Firebenders would not be controlling the atoms, they would simply be energizing them to give off light. Also, these different atoms are not just different levels of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. Inputting different levels of those atoms does not change the basic reaction in any way; no matter what, they burn to form carbon monoxide and water vapor (with the excess becoming things like smoke and ash), and the levels of CO and H2O gases do not affect the flame color.

If Azula's flame were blue because of different atoms in the air, she would need some source of these different atoms. No, the different atoms would not be anything involved in the basic reaction. For example, if you wanted a green flame you would have to actually put copper in the flame to provide the atoms that like the color green. Yes, atoms 'like' colors; not in a sentient way, but in a resonance way. For example, the sky 'likes' the color blue, so that is the color it appears when the sun shines on it. However, at sunrise and sunset there is more atmosphere between the sun and the viewer, so less energy actually reaches the viewer and the atoms in the air only have enough energy to vibrate at reds, oranges, and yellows. This is actually a great connection to fire--weaker fires burn between red and yellow, while focused fires burn bright blue. The atoms in the air still like the color blue, and Azula is skilled enough to give them the energy required for the atoms to be blue while regular Firebenders can only make enough energy for normal flames. Azula wouldn't need to change anything about the air to make blue fire.

Breathing on a fire does not even affect it in the first place unless it is a small fire, and by small I mean a candle-sized flame (or palm-sized at the largest); you would have to be able to breath out a lot more air than the volume of the fire in order to affect the fire, and because your breath is carbon dioxide it would likely just smother the flame anyways. Carbon dioxide cannot burn to become carbon monoxide (I doubt even Azula could make fire hot enough to do that), so it would not "carbonize" the flame (I don't think "carbonize" is even a real term in the first place). It may not even be enough to suffocate the flame because our lungs are not 100% efficient, so some oxygen should still be present and that would be enough to sustain the flame until the carbon dioxide left.

When I mentioned water vapor, I wasn't talking about heating water until it vaporizes. Water vapor is actually a product of the chemical reaction itself: C + H + O2 --> CO2 + H2O  (Carbon monoxide is not a main product of flame; it is produced in much smaller amounts than carbon dioxide, due to the imperfection of the reaction.)  The source of carbon and hydrogen varies, but the equation doesn't.  When something burns, it makes water just like it makes carbon dioxide and smoke. If you don't believe me, read this. Yet for any of that to have an impact on fire, the fire first has to actually burn something because you can't make something out of nothing, and Firebenders don't rely on normal combustion reactions for fuel.

You said earlier that you don't think breathing is important in Waterbending and Earthbending, yet it is important. The bending forms for all four elements are based on matrial arts, so the breath would be equally important in all of them. Is that not enough? You seem to place a lot of importance on the role of breath in the bending itself. Think about Waterbending, for example. Waterbenders can use their breath to freeze water into ice. The breath itself has no effect on the water, so the breath's importance in this case must be purely for focus of the bender's efforts on cooling the water. The power of the breath is not limited t this one instance, either. Any time a bender of any element must focus his/her energies more than usual on a particular way of bending, the bender must first gain control of his/her breath. It's not always noticable, but it is there nonetheless. You don't have to have exaggerated inhalation and exhalation to prove you have breath control. Breath control is simply breathing at a calm, steady pace.

You say that I haven't disproved anything, that I have only shown it isn't guaranteed, and that it would still be possible through unknown methods. Yet I have disproved several things because some of the situations you describe are physically impossible even within the suspended reality of Avatar, no matter what methods you try to use. The main points on which you rely are not valid. Fire cannot hold poison gas or smoke no matter what you do, because fire is not tangible. Changing fire color from orange to blue does not mean manipulating the chemical composition of the air, it only means changing the energy levels of the fire. Breathing on a flame, no matter how small the flame, will not imbue it with carbon dioxide; it will either have zero effect on the flame, or it might suffocate the flame if the flame is small enough and you have a way to keep the gas on the flame, but it will not stay in the flame and change the properties of the flame. Carbon dioxide will not burn and produce carbon monoxide, so even if you could somehow put carbon dioxide in the flame it would not turn into carbon monoxide. Fire does not produce smoke out of thin air, because there is nothing in the air to burn to make smoke. (If you're sure that fire produces smoke on its own in the show, please link a screen shot and I will reconsider that point.)