Talk:Airbending/@comment-76.24.189.176-20120121100340/@comment-4521003-20120214012820

Just because Avatar Wiki says something is true doesn't mean the science supports it. The person who wrote that part of the article happened to think that it sounded accurate; that doesn't mean he/she was an expert in how it works. The exact methods behind firebreathing are not clear enough from the canon to make a definite statement, so neither of us should use that information on that page if we want clear facts. For instance, I was under the impression that the breath was not the literal source of firebreathing, but of the intent to have flames there. (Hear me out on this.) Remember when Aang did push-ups with his breath? He was not literally blowing hard enough to support his weight, but rather using his breath to direct his bending. He could have just as easily used his hand to direct the air. It's similar with the firebreathing; it's not so much what the breath is made of and how you actually breathe as it is the direction of intent to follow the path of the breath. Whoever wrote the page may not have considered that when figuring out how to describe the firebreath. Note that there is no source link for the method of firebreathing; the links are for the way Iroh received his nickname and for the fact that it works in the cold. Also, I checked the source for the line about tea as a catalyst and Iroh does not ever say that, nor does he really imply it.

There are forms of fire that do not need oxygen. While a regular combustion reaction requires oxygen, there are other flame-producing reactions that do no need oxygen at all. So not all flames need oxygen. Oxygen and flames are not inseperable, only oxygen and normal combustion reactions.

Also, have you heard of suspended reality? Within a show like this, real life can only be taken so far. True, in real life flames cannot exist without a reaction, and they usually a regular combustion reacton. But in the Avatar world, the fact that people control fire in the first place changes the rules of the game a little. With a bender creating the fire, there is no longer a need for a fuel source that undergoes a combustion reaction to create a flame. The key purpose of the reaction is for the massive amounts of energy required to excite any atoms that happen to be nearby, but firebenders would produce this energy themselves, thus eliminating the need for any chemical reaction in the first place.

You keep bringing up the CO2 and how firebenders could somehow change it into CO. But CO2 does not form CO very easily. The CO produced in a normal combustion reaction is produced separately from the CO2, and only forms when the combustion equation is not balanced completely.

Rockets are propelled by the hot gases created in the chemical reaction, not by the fire. The rocket pushes on the gas, and the gas pushes back, which is what propells the rocket.

I'm growing tired of this, because it's getting nowhere. You keep citing things that aren't possible as proof of something that is also impossible. Read through the entire Wiki articles for combustion and flames, and go through the information in A:TLA itself not just the articles about it, and see if you can find anything that proves that the actual flames--which are made of light--could somehow become "poisonous". All of the true facts I know and have read concerning fire tell me that you cannot make a "poisonous" flame. Even if there are poisonous gases are present in/around a flame, they are not an actual part of the flame, and the poison goes away either by simply dissipating or by finishing burning once the source of the poison is removed. The poison does not stay with the flame very well, it does not "taint" the flame, and it is not a physical component of the flame. What makes fire dangerous is the fact that it will burn you, not whether there are toxic substances in it; the substances are dangerous regardless of whether they are a part of the fire or not. The fire affects the poison, not the other way around. As soon as you move the flame, the poison does not move with it because there is nothing holding it in the fire.