Understanding how wildfire burns vegetation is critical in understanding how to protect ourselves and our homes. To better understand what happens during a fire, you can view our interactive feature, "The Dynamics of Wildfire"
In this lesson, we'll use several experiments to understand how wildfire works--what makes it spread, grow, and more. It is absolutely required that you work on these experiments with an adult.
The experiments are outlined in downloadable PDF files. The originals appear in "FireWorks Curriculum, USDA-Forest General Technical Report RMRS-GTR-65, September 2000 (rev. Dec. 2002).
Experiment 1: The Fire Triangle in the Wildlands
The Fire Triangle tries to capture the concepts underlying wildland fire behavior: a powerful, highly variable force of nature. When you're looking at a match or a candle, it looks simple. In wildlands, it usually isn't. Instead, it is complicated, intriguing, and dramatic.
In this activity, you'll construct and demonstrate some principles of fire behavior. You'll use matches to model trees and a matrix of matches to model a forest. You'll also compare fire behavior on different slopes and with different arrangements of trees.
(Download the experiment here.)
Experiment 2: Understanding Fuels
In this activity, you'll get the opportunity to understand how different types of fuels work, the difference between green and dead fuels, and more.
(Download the experiment here.)
Experiment 3: Large vs. Small Twigs as Fuel
What do you think will burn more easily? Form your own hypothesis, perform experiments, and use the fire triangle to explain your findings.