Airhead
The mysteries of fire-breathing are being revealed! Or as far as Kaya is concerned, she’s getting proof that Kai is an airhead xD
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Kai, it’s rude to scare your Doctor
and harder to stay in his grace
if you ignite your flamethrower power
when he’s staring right into your face.
Kaya gets to have the smart word here
simply because her bro can’t reply.
She knows he won’t take the chance;
he’s really not that kind of guy.
Finding the fire spray nozzles
right at the top of the throat
is evidence no other Doc has…
Do you think that this one might gloat?
Said the kettle calling the pot black.
Shhh, let her have her moment :p
Well ; the usual and common belief is dragons have a “stomach” filled with gas , and they can flame it (while spiting) with a sort of electric stone in their throat
Actually, this is more reminiscent from the dragons in the 2009 film, Reign of Fire. Each gland secrets one half of a binary chemical. When the dragon breathes fire, the two liquids combine and combust, creating a sort of fiery napalm. In this case, it’s not liquid napalm, but still fire nonetheless.
Correction, 2002 ><
But ; in “Reign of fire” , it’s wyverns and not dragons . Surely there is minor inner anatomical changes ?
Yes, technically wyverns, but the point is not the species but the delivery method of their flames.
The word is hypergolic. If the reaction is slow enough to allow the mixture to exit the mouth before igniting, or for that matter mixing, it could work. Would work better than the hydrogen method. Fairly safe so long as the two chemicals never meet until wanted. They would need to be mild enough to reside safely inside of a being for an extended period. We will need a pro’s opinion there. A chemist and doctor will need to collaborate to speculate about potential candidates. The author has probably done this already.
I remember in an old animated film called ‘The Flight Of Dragons’, it was speculated that dragons must regularly eat small quantities of limestone; which when dissolved in stomach acid, would produce helium; providing flight akin to a blimp – due to how they have a sort of honeycomb of bone and muscle in their bodies, which they could expand to spread the helium through them providing lift; when the helium was exhaled was ignited by a natural electric charge on the roof of their mouths… so there you have it – flight and fire explained in one go!
I really hope you mean hydrogen, cause helium is inert and nonflammable.
I saw some speculation like that. But Hydrogen, not Helium. Helium does not burn, and in fact down’t do anything really.
I need to read other comments before commenting.
I’m personally fond of wild dragons chewing flint so they can make a spark by clacking their teeth together during the gas exhalation. Doesn’t work for the twins but it makes more sense than an electrical organ in a place as sensitive as the mouth.
Helium does plenty of things. Like escaping airtight containers using quantum tunneling. Has lowest boiling point of all elements. And when near absolute zero, is superconductive and superfluid. It is one of least reactive elements, but there are ways to force it into stable molecules.
Actually, no go. The amount of lift from either helium or hydrogen is minimal and nowhere near enough to effect the buoyancy of a dragon. The amount of lift available is the difference between the weight of HE or H2 and air at atmospheric temperature and pressure for the volume displaced.
Ignoring how a dragon would generate hydrogen or helium in the first place, at normal atmospheric temperature and presure, the densities are:
Air 1.2050 kg/m^3 (0.0752 lb/ft^3)
Helium 0.1664 kg/m^3 (0.0104 lb/ft^3)
Hydrogen 0.0838 kg/m^3 (0.0052 lb/ft^3)
So at best, hydrogen would displace 0.07 pounds per cubic foot.
How big is a dragon? Well Kai and Kaya are at about 3 ft^3 each and if half (very generous), of their volume were devoted to hydrogen filled gas sacs, the total lift would be about a tenth of a pound – about the weight of their tongues!
Mammals are largely water which has a density of 62 lb/ft^3 so if a dragon was half as dense, a large one, say 100 ft^3, would weigh about 3000 lbs. Fifty cubic feet of hydrogen displaced air would provide a whopping 3.5 lbs of lift. Hardly worth it. Even in a dragon pupulated world, physics still applies.
… actually, in most dragon populated words, physics laws are taken as polite suggestions. Dragons mostly fly using magic.
I thought the “stomach/lung” thing came from Dragonheart 2. One was a fire lung, and the other was an ice lung.
It’s a pretty common concept in settings that don’t want to explain fire breath as magic. I actually first came across it in dragon heart as well.
Nope : it comes from “Dragons , if they were real” . A good scientific study video
I’ve read a couple of books that went in the same direction but had different solutions. Don’t recall what they were offhand.
According to Amazon, “Dragons , if they were real” is a Hollywood fantasy, not a scientific study.
Art K: It couldn’t be a scientific study without actual dragon to study. I still believe they put lot of though into it … it’s not like there is shortage of university students to work on project like this.
I looked at some options. The elctric stone option wasn’t really something that I thought would be handy for them :p
Probably want to look up the Pern novels. I actually ran out the chemistry…the firestone contains P2H4, not PH3 (phosphine), but given some physiologically feasible chemical reactions, the chemistry checks out.
Yes, poke the fire breathing dragon in the mouth, that is an awesome idéa.
And put your face inches away!
And activate the gas release… now how does the ignition work? 😂
It’s only his tongue for now, no worries yet :p
Kai can probably snap that wooden stick by just talking. XD
Well, to be fair, those wooden sticks aren’t the sturdiest things ever :p
I was wondering: are the dragons scared of dentists or the dentists scared of dragons? XD 😛
Probably using a welders mask helped when they were really young.
There is actually an anime called ‘Dragon Dentist’. But the dragon in that movie is really gigantic. A single tooth is larger than a human.
But I agree, dentists and flame breath are a potential explosive combination.
A little bit of both, I think xD
Jesse’s Adventure, Panel 1: “One wendigo means you got /a/ bad signal…”
That might actually just be a dialogue quirk in this situation
Thanks. This time, it was intentional, though :p
Sounds like Kaya got that airhead descriptor backwards if she forgot all the dumb stunts she’s pulled. Besides, if anything Kai’s a hothead.
It’s more fun to talk about Kai than about herself in this situation :p
Woo! It’s happening, the secret of fire!
So if Kai’s an airhead, what does that make Kaya?
Combustible.
The twin that speaks before she thinks xD
And they’re already speculating, they’ll probably make comment about compact muscles when they finally get to the strength test. I wonder how good elemental resistances of the twins are
They’re a little fire resistant at least :p
Seems to be a common idea when a setting is grounded more in “reality” than “magic” to have dragons’s fire breathing be explained by it being a gas they shoot that ignites when in contact with the air or through some other method.
Well, magic wouldn’t really be a good fit for the story, so I had to come up with something plausible ^^
In my dragon stories (not published) the dragons were directly catalyzing air to produce a flame.
Optionally, super-heating that flame was done by directly injecting small amounts of stomach acid.
So, it looks like a more in-depth examination had begun. What more will the doctors discover about our lovable twins? Tune in to fine out!
Yup, more to come xD
Well I think kai and Kaya use hydrogen based venom and oxygen from their two valves and have a flint a steel system with their tongue and teeth. So to breathe fire they need to first get huge amount of oxygen from taking a deep breath or use the extra oxygen from previous breaths. Then add some venom to the mix. And finally flick their tongue on their front tooth and do all of this while breathing out. Also merry Christmas☃️☃️☃️
That’s a pretty solid theory Toby! I like it! A very Merry Christmas to you as well. And a Happy New Year.
@Toby:
Good theory. Though, from the picture, I don’t see any striker on Kai’s teeth or tongue. I know we can’t see the tip of his tongue in the panel, but if it was there, it would make sense for the Doc to comment on the striker, too.
A flint and steel system wouldn’t be very comfortable, I think. A great theory, though 😀
Oh, and Merry Christmas 😀
Jeez doc, that is a TERRIFYING spot to put your face. What if Kai sneezes? You’ve seen firsthand the results of that mouth without even having a visible flame. On that note, I do wonder if they will schedule specialized testing at a later date to measure properties of the twins’ fire. After all, many myths containing fire-breathing dragons make the claim that nothing burns hotter than dragon’s fire. I wonder if that applies to hybrid dragons? Plenty effective either way. As for the artwork on the comic, it’s very well done. This whole exchange is quite adorable. (Other than that drawing from inside Kai’s mouth. I think it’s awesome, but the trouble is that it’s TOO well done. I feel like I’m being eaten, and something in my brain is NOT okay with it.) The drawing is all amazingly shaded, well-detailed, and just maintains a semi-formal, totally adorable tone throughout. I love it. Stupendous work as always Robin. Stay awesome! And a very Merry Christmas to you. (Hey, even if you don’t celebrate it, at least you (probably) have off school or work!)
Haha, sorry I made you uncomfortable with Kai’s mouth there xD Didn’t mean to do that xD
Merry Christmas, Alpha, and thanks for the nice words again ^^ And don’t worry about the doctor, Kai has pretty good control of his ability xD
Obviously, fusion burns hotter. But yes, there are lot of myths claiming that dragon fire burns stone. That might however point to something else than temperature … like, you can melt sand to glass but you can’t burn it as it’s already oxid … unless you burn it with FLUOR instead of oxygen.
There are lot of interesting substances containing fluor. Interesting from safe distance I mean. Search for FOOF (Dioxygen difluoride) or ClF3 (Chlorine trifluoride). Chlorine trifluoride and gases like it have been reported to ignite sand, asbestos, and other highly fire-retardant materials. Some of the compounds that produced violent reactions with FOOF include ethyl alcohol, methane, ammonia, and even water ice. (Noone was brave enough to let it reacts with something as warm as water, most experimental reactions have been conducted near −100 °C.)
… fluorine, not fluor.
Oh jeez. You’re talking to a chemist here. Don’t get me started on good old ClF3. I swear that stuff comes straight from the deepest pit of Hell. If a chemical could be evil, then that’s it.
Yeah, Kai’s the airhead of the two. Sure Kaya.
Shhh, let her have her moment :p
In the Christmas image, I can’t tell if Nate is trying to explain something to Rex or giving him the finger. Either way, I respect his dedication for doing it while simultaneously fending off a strangulation attack and flying through the air upside-down.
Explaining. It’s his index finger he’s holding up ^^
I think every time we’ve seen them do fire breath, they’ve put their mouths into an “o” shape. That makes me think there’s a bit of compression required to ignite the flame. I know that diesel fuel requires compression to ignite. In fact, diesel doesn’t even require a spark; it requires quite a bit of compression to ignite.
I’m not saying they’re spitting diesel, but they could be using some type of naturally-produced biogas which only requires compression to ignite. Eliminating the need for a spark would allow them to have otherwise normal mouths and tongues, which would allow them to speak normally, which they seem to do. (So far we’ve seen no indication that they have any speech impediments or unusual accents.)
If compression is required, their lips could be made from some harden-able material. I mean, it would be soft during usual conversation, sleep, eating, etc., but their lips could become physically harder and invulnerable to flame during the process of fire-breathing.
It would be interesting to see if they can make their lips harden without actually breathing fire.
Diesel uses a glow-plug instead of a spark-plug; but, only until the engine is initially started.
After that it’s just compression and residual heat from the last firing of the cylinder to keep it running.
@Iron Ed: Funny you mentioned glow plugs. My Dad has an older Chevy 1-ton diesel pickup, and it uses them.
I’ve also driven newer school buses. Instead of glow plugs, they use a heater in the air intake. So before you start cranking the engine, you heat the ingoing air up to about 185°F.
On especially cold mornings, I’ve had to use the air heater three or four times before cranking the engine, but I’ve never been blocked from starting the engine.
Heh. 🙂 I’m obviously behind the times in my diesel tech. 😉 (I’ve never actually had one!)
And; I’ve always been amused that my old model airplane motors used a glow plug. ?!? LOL Those used a battery to heat the plug until the engine started. After that the heat of combustion kept the glow plug wire hot enough to ignite the next cylinder full of fuel; NOT a lot of compression like the diesels. That’s my theory anyway. 😉
They were using that a long time ago. My old 5-ton tractor in the Army, old in 1979 – it had a flat windshield – had something like that. Never got to use it, being in Texas. It normally started without it if the batteries were strong enough.
Basically a small flamethrower. A spray nozzle and a sparkplug.
That’s a very interesting theory, Jones. I have something different in mind, but if I hadn’t, I would totally go this direction. It’s more unique than most dragon fire breathing explanations and it works well with the setting. Very nice 😀
Everybody’s gangsta until the doc starts doing the medical experiments…..
Then they’re healthy gangsta’s xD
In Pern, the dragons chewed a type of rock that contained Phosphine, which is hypergolic with air. Oddly, they never mentioned the foul smell in the series. The dragons had a special “stomach” to hold the rock, and spit the remains up later.
They could not breath fire without the rock.
Interesting. I’m amazed there are so many different mechanism’s explained in fiction. I’m adding mind to that list next week xD Hope it holds up as far as explanations go (since it’s not really an explanation, and more the doctor’s hypothesis at that point, but yeah)
Looking at panel 4, the twins seem to have very human-like teeth. Although looking at older pics, I would have expected the fangs to be far bigger with the way they often stick out.
My style evolved a little, and it seemed appropriate that they had more human-like teeth than full on dragon or carnivore teeth. They eat a regular human diet after all ^^
Those guns they use to apply foam insulation work the same way. Once the liquids mix, they will harden / burn. So you have to mix them in mid air.
Or at least some of them work that way. Some of them use disposable nozzles, but that isn’t relevant to the twins.
I can’t believe it took me until reading your comment for me to remember the bombardier bettle is a thing. Some evolutionary biology nerd I am
bombardier bettle system.
Yes indeed, there are some chemicals that work like that. Good thing the twins don’t spit insulation, though xD
Puts a new meaning to, “Foaming at the mouth,” eh?
LOL! Might be useful in making movies though… 🙂
I don’t understand what he said at the end…
“Kaya, you idiot!”
Are you sure that’s not the parotid meatus? Where the parotid salivary gland empties into the mouth? Then again, it’s not unlikely…a snake’s venom glands are evolutionary modifications of salivary glands…