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Quiz about Fueling the Fire
Quiz about Fueling the Fire

Fueling the Fire Trivia Quiz


Fire and fuels are often taken for granted in the developed world but this state of affairs is relatively recent. This quiz explores how scientists discovered the true nature of fire and the substances burned to produce it.

A multiple-choice quiz by bucknallbabe. Estimated time: 6 mins.
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Author
bucknallbabe
Time
6 mins
Type
Multiple Choice
Quiz #
322,767
Updated
Dec 03 21
# Qns
10
Difficulty
Tough
Avg Score
6 / 10
Plays
938
Awards
Top 35% Quiz
- -
Question 1 of 10
1. The earliest evidence of fire appears in the fossil record some 420 million years ago.

What was happening at the time to account for its appearance?
Hint


Question 2 of 10
2. Early humans would have appreciated fire for heat, light, warmth, scaring away predators and cooking food. At first, they would have made use of naturally-occurring wildfires but gradually began to control fire for their own purposes. There is some fossil evidence of this dating back 1.5 million years or so.

Which of these early humans is considered by some scientists to be the first to control fire?
Hint


Question 3 of 10
3. Ancient Greek philosophers considered fire to be one of the four elements. Plato in the 4th century BCE suggested that each element was made up of atoms of a defined shape. The shape for fire was sharp and pointed to model the way in which heat could penetrate almost all matter.

Which "Platonic solid" was representative of fire?
Hint


Question 4 of 10
4. In the 17th century, scientists began to try to explain combustion. One of the early ideas was that an element called "phlogiston" was released when something burned. Air was only able to absorb a limited quantity of "phlogiston" and when this limit was reached, burning would stop. This idea was shown to be false by a chemist who performed many quantitative experiments and argued that the air contains a gas which combines with a substance when it burns.

Who was this chemist?
Hint


Question 5 of 10
5. Many chemical reactions need heat energy to start them off or to speed them up. One of the biggest problems for the early chemists was to find a clean, intense heat source.

Which of these pieces of equipment was NOT a typical piece of equipment for producing heat in the 19th century chemistry laboratory?
Hint


Question 6 of 10
6. The gas used for the early Bunsen burner was derived from coal.

What name is given to the solid residue, also a fuel, when coal gas is produced?
Hint


Question 7 of 10
7. Ancient peoples such as the Persians, Greeks, Chinese and Romans exploited easily accessible oil and pitch seeps but the modern age of petroleum usage began with the ability to separate the fractions by distillation perfected in the mid 19th century. The need for kerosene for lighting drove the search for "rock-oil" or petroleum and deposits were located, wells drilled and refineries constructed.

Where was the world's first modern, albeit small, oil refinery built?
Hint


Question 8 of 10
8. Before humans began to exploit fossil fuels made from the remains of dead plants and animals from long ago, they were reliant on biofuels, such as wood, straw and dried animal dung. As supplies of fossil fuels are non-renewable, alternatives are being sought. One of the biggest consumers of petroleum is the automobile industry.

Which country had most of its cars running on a biofuel derived from sugar cane in the 1980s?
Hint


Question 9 of 10
9. A popular model of the ingredients for combustion is the "Fire Triangle" but the firefighting industry has developed this into the idea of the "Fire Tetrahedron".

What is the fourth component of the "Fire Tetrahedron"?
Hint


Question 10 of 10
10. Over the years, humans have learned to control fire but there are still regular outbreaks of "wildfire" which arise from natural or non-natural causes such as lightning, volcanic eruptions, coal-mines, "slash and burn" agriculture and arson. They can be classified based on the fuel type.

Which of these classifications is matched INCORRECTLY with its main fuel source?
Hint



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Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. The earliest evidence of fire appears in the fossil record some 420 million years ago. What was happening at the time to account for its appearance?

Answer: Plants colonising the land

According to the idea of the fire triangle, three components are necessary - a fuel, heat and oxygen. It was only when land plants began to give out oxygen as a waste product of photosynthesis that there was sufficient (above 13%) in the atmosphere to sustain burning.

The fuel was the plants themselves. Lightning strikes. volcanic eruptions and meteorite impacts are possible natural ignition sources.
2. Early humans would have appreciated fire for heat, light, warmth, scaring away predators and cooking food. At first, they would have made use of naturally-occurring wildfires but gradually began to control fire for their own purposes. There is some fossil evidence of this dating back 1.5 million years or so. Which of these early humans is considered by some scientists to be the first to control fire?

Answer: Homo erectus

The early human Homo erectus is believed to have originated in Africa about 1.8 million to 1.3 million years ago. Fossil remains have been found as far away as China and Java. Several sites in Europe and Asia seem to indicate controlled use of fire by Homo erectus who was possibly the first human species to be socially organised into hunter-gatherer groups.

Australopithecus predates Homo erectus by about two million years and may have been ancestral. Homo neanderthalensis appeared in Europe much later, the earliest characteristics first appearing 600,000 years ago and being fully-developed by 130,000 years ago. Homo sapiens sapiens, modern humans, has been traced back to an origin in Africa about 200,000 years ago by Richard Leakey.

There is much unresolved discussion and debate about these early hominids and humans.
3. Ancient Greek philosophers considered fire to be one of the four elements. Plato in the 4th century BCE suggested that each element was made up of atoms of a defined shape. The shape for fire was sharp and pointed to model the way in which heat could penetrate almost all matter. Which "Platonic solid" was representative of fire?

Answer: Tetrahedron

A tetrahedron is a regular solid with four faces and four vertices. The other "Platonic solids" are the cube which represented the element earth; the octahedron which represented the shape of atoms of air; the icosahedron which represented water, and the dodecahedron.
The idea of "atoms" (uncuttable particles) was originally propounded by Empedocles but was not accepted by Aristotle whose ideas prevailed for about 2000 years until John Dalton published his atomic theory in 1808.
4. In the 17th century, scientists began to try to explain combustion. One of the early ideas was that an element called "phlogiston" was released when something burned. Air was only able to absorb a limited quantity of "phlogiston" and when this limit was reached, burning would stop. This idea was shown to be false by a chemist who performed many quantitative experiments and argued that the air contains a gas which combines with a substance when it burns. Who was this chemist?

Answer: Antoine Lavoisier

Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794) is sometimes referred to as "the Father of Chemistry". One of his major contributions was the principle of the "conservation of matter" which he demonstrated with the results from carefully controlled quantitative experiments. He showed that when substances burned they increased in weight as a result of combining with oxygen in the air, instead of losing weight as would be expected if "phlogiston" was released from the substance.

Georg Stahl (1660-1734) proposed the "phlogiston" theory; Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) discovered oxygen in 1775 but failed to recognise its true nature; Justus von Liebig (1803-1873) pioneered the use of standard procedures for the analysis of organic substances.
5. Many chemical reactions need heat energy to start them off or to speed them up. One of the biggest problems for the early chemists was to find a clean, intense heat source. Which of these pieces of equipment was NOT a typical piece of equipment for producing heat in the 19th century chemistry laboratory?

Answer: Convex lens

Large convex lenses were recognised as a possible clean, intense heat source and several were made (including one by Antoine Lavoisier in 1774) but they needed to be so big and cost so much, as well as being dependent on the weather, that they were not in common use.
By the time Robert Bunsen (1811-1899) brought his burner into use around 1855 (Michael Faraday may have designed a similar one somewhat earlier), gas streetlighting was common but the flame, which was fine for lighting purposes, was too dirty and cool for laboratory use, smoke and soot acting as contaminants for reacting substances. Bunsen's burner produced an intense, clean, controllable flame and its use rapidly spread through the scientific community.
Blowpipes as a means of means of producing enough heat to melt metals had been known since ancient times but they were popularised in the 18th century by Swedish mineralogists who were very skilled in their use. Small, table-top furnaces were extensively used by alchemists in their search for the "elixir of life" and "the philosopher's stone" and in common with other pieces of apparatus and procedures were later adopted by chemists.
6. The gas used for the early Bunsen burner was derived from coal. What name is given to the solid residue, also a fuel, when coal gas is produced?

Answer: Coke

Coke is produced by baking bituminous coal in an oven at about 2000 degrees Celsius. It came into common use during the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century when Abraham Darby used it instead of charcoal to fire a blast furnace in his iron foundry.

As the coal is heated, volatile components such as gas and coal tar are driven off as by-products. Coke itself burns at a high temperature and without smoke which makes it suitable for use in smoke-free zones. Slag refers to the solid remains when a metal is extracted from its ore by smelting. Spoil heaps are made from the unwanted material when coal or metal ores are mined. Charcoal is a fuel produced in a similar way to coke but with wood instead of coal as the raw material.
7. Ancient peoples such as the Persians, Greeks, Chinese and Romans exploited easily accessible oil and pitch seeps but the modern age of petroleum usage began with the ability to separate the fractions by distillation perfected in the mid 19th century. The need for kerosene for lighting drove the search for "rock-oil" or petroleum and deposits were located, wells drilled and refineries constructed. Where was the world's first modern, albeit small, oil refinery built?

Answer: Jaslo, Poland

The first oil refinery was built in 1854 to produce kerosene but it was only when the kerosene lamp became popular that big oil refineries were built. The first large refinery was built with US investment in Ploiesti, Romania but refining industries also grew up In Russia where the Baku oilfields became the centre of an oil boom, and later in Sweden around Oljeon.
8. Before humans began to exploit fossil fuels made from the remains of dead plants and animals from long ago, they were reliant on biofuels, such as wood, straw and dried animal dung. As supplies of fossil fuels are non-renewable, alternatives are being sought. One of the biggest consumers of petroleum is the automobile industry. Which country had most of its cars running on a biofuel derived from sugar cane in the 1980s?

Answer: Brazil

All four countries are major sugar producers but it was in Brazil that the technology for using sugar-derived ethanol in motor vehicles was developed. Originally initiated as a patriotic programme, the spur was the hike in oil prices in the 1970s and the price of oil has affected the state-run programme since then, as has the discovery of oil deposits off the coast of Brazil so that it has had a bit of a bumpy ride.
9. A popular model of the ingredients for combustion is the "Fire Triangle" but the firefighting industry has developed this into the idea of the "Fire Tetrahedron". What is the fourth component of the "Fire Tetrahedron"?

Answer: Chain reaction

The "chain reaction" face of the fire tetrahedron refers to the need for the other three faces (fuel, heat and oxygen) to be able to react freely with each other. Whilst it is commonly appreciated that the removal of any one of these faces will cause combustion to cease, the firefighting industry now uses chemicals such as bromotrifluoromethane which inhibit the chemical reaction without the need to remove the other components.

They are particularly useful in fires which involve metals such as lithium and magnesium which react more quickly with water, the traditional coolant, than oxygen resulting in more intense fires or even explosions.
10. Over the years, humans have learned to control fire but there are still regular outbreaks of "wildfire" which arise from natural or non-natural causes such as lightning, volcanic eruptions, coal-mines, "slash and burn" agriculture and arson. They can be classified based on the fuel type. Which of these classifications is matched INCORRECTLY with its main fuel source?

Answer: Canopy; birds' nests

Whilst birds' nest may get burned in a wildfire, it is the abundance of suspended flammable material such as branches, vines and mosses which are the main fuel source and which allow a canopy fire to spread. Such fires are usually initiated when surface fires start ladder fires which spread via logs and tree climbing plants to the upper layers of a forest. Many plant species have adapted to the prevalence of wildfire by producing fire-resistant seeds which germinate only when stimulated by the effects of wildfire, such as smoke and heat.

The removal of flammable debris from the forest floor and the increased light gives such seedlings a better chance of survival.
Source: Author bucknallbabe

This quiz was reviewed by FunTrivia editor crisw before going online.
Any errors found in FunTrivia content are routinely corrected through our feedback system.
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