Compressing a gas in a fire piston

Produced by the Institute of Physics and the National STEM Learning Centre and Network (https://www.stem.org.uk/), this video demonstrates how compressing a gas increases its temperature. A small piece of cotton wool is placed into the bottom of a narrow plastic tube. When the air is rapidly compressed by a piston, the air temperature increases and the cotton ignites. The 'fire piston' can be used to illustrate the transfer of energy, kinetic theory and Charles' law.

• #science_technology
• #fire_piston