Carbon arcs (was Re: EPROM Erasers?)

Burning, I'd guess; carbon vapour at just below plasma temperatures is not going to be shy about combining with oxygen - which itself is probably not much cooler - from air. I bet! I'm reminded of reading of someone doing work that involved some extreme heat sources - testing heat-shielding materials, I think it was - and there was, out in the middle of a desert somewhere, an underground torch whose flame emerged from a hole in the ground. Something like magnesium dust in liquid oxygen, pumped (at well over its flame propagation speed!) through the nozzle...I forget details. Someone photograhed it from some miles away (about as close as the camera would survive) and the picture looks like midnight even though it was high noon; the torch easily outshone anything as piddly as the sun. I imagine the ground was glass for some distance around, shortly after the first burn started.... Not very useful for the home hobbyist with EPROMs to erase. But I always find extremes interesting.... /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B