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Asked by callumsims892 to James, Marcus, Martin, Rob, Suzanne on 19 Mar 2012.
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James Boone answered on 19 Mar 2012:
When gases are heated in an open space, they expand. The air around a hot fire is being heated by different amounts all the time, and the heat is also being transferred around. The blurriness is caused by the different densities of air caused by the heating process from the fire. Light travels at different speeds in various densities of air and it is this which causes the surroundings to look blurry.
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Martin Zaltz Austwick answered on 20 Mar 2012:
The “heat haze” you get around a fire (and on a hot day) is caused by “refraction” – what happens to light when it moves through different materials. Refraction is why light bends when it goes into water and a swimming pool looks much more shallow than it is. In this case, the hot air has different densities and that causes the light to bend. As James explained, this is because the speed of light is different in different materials, and that makes it bend.
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Robert Thompson answered on 20 Mar 2012:
Yes sounds excelent explanation. This is the effect that creates a mirrage in the desert, or on a really hot day when you drive down a tarmac road it can look like there is a puddle in the road. It is the road (or sand in a desert mirrage) heating the air directly above. The light being refracted then gives the impression of water being present …. But don’t be fooled.
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Marcus Gallagher-Jones answered on 21 Mar 2012:
By smoke do you mean the grey stuff? This is the result of incomplete combustion of hydrocarbons. When you burn things like wood or oil in air the carbon based molecules (they are almost exclusively carbon and hydrogen) are decomposed to C02 and water. C02 is colourless however when there is not enough oxygen some parts of the molecules will not be fully broken down, a process known as incomplete combustion. These solid particles are what make black smoke black.
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