Gordon, Dien, and All,

Going through some old files looking for recipes, I came upon this old email. Copy below.

I tried several links, and they STILL are O.K. A thunder storm forced me to shut down early.

Be SURE TO CHECK THE PURDUE URL AT THE END of all this. Lots of interesting links.

ENJOY.

Mary

P.S.
I found a recipe for Maple Wine and Honey Wine. I haven't tried to make either, but if anyone is interested, I could send you the recipes.
Mary

-------------------

The URL is authentic,

but you must wait for the bottom of the page to come through
before you can access either the picture or the video...

| -----------------------------
| Our subject today is lighting charcoal grills. One of
| our favorite charcoal grill lighters is a guy named
| George Goble, a computer person in the Purdue University
| engineering department.
|
| Each year, Goble and a bunch of other engineers hold a
| picnic in West Lafayette, Indiana, at which they cook
| hamburgers on a big grill. Being engineers, they began
| looking for practical ways to speed up the
| charcoal-lighting process.
|
| "We started by blowing the charcoal with a hair dryer,"
| Goble told me in a telephone interview. "Then we
| figured out that it would light faster if we used a
| vacuum cleaner."
|
| If you know anything about (1) engineers and (2) guys in
| general, you know what happened: The purpose of the
| charcoal-lighting shifted from cooking hamburgers to
| seeing how fast they could light the charcoal.
|
| >From the vacuum cleaner, they escalated to using a
| propane torch, then an acetylene torch. Then Goble
| started using compressed pure oxygen, which caused the
| charcoal to burn much faster, because as you recall from
| chemistry class, fire is essentially the rapid
| combination of oxygen with a reducing agent (the
| charcoal). We discovered that a long time ago,
| somewhere in the valley between the Tigris and Euphrates
| rivers (or something along those lines).
|
| By this point, Goble was getting pretty good times. But
| in the world of competitive charcoal-lighting, "pretty
| good" does not cut the mustard.
|
| Thus, Goble hit upon the idea of using --- get ready ---
| liquid oxygen. This is oxygen. In terms of releasing
| energy, pouring liquid oxygen on charcoal is the
| equivalent of throwing a live squirrel into a room
| containing 50 million Labrador retrievers.
|
| On Goble's World Wide Web page (the address is
| http://ghg.ecn.purdue.edu/), you can see actual
| photographs and a video of Goble using a bucket attached
| to a 10-foot-long wooden handle to dump 3 gallons of
| liquid oxygen (not sold in stores) onto a grill
| containing 60 pounds of charcoal and a lit cigarette for
| ignition.
|
| What follows is the most impressive charcoal-lighting I
| have ever seen, featuring a large fireball that
| according to Goble, reached 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
| The charcoal was ready for cooking in --- this has to be
| a world record --- 3 seconds.
|
| There's also a photo of what happened when Goble used
| the same technique on a flimsy $2.88 discount-store
| grill. All that's left is a circle of charcoal with a
| few shreds of metal in it. "Basically, the grill
| vaporized," said Goble. "We were thinking of returning
| it to the store for a refund."
|
| Looking at Goble's video and photos, I became, as an
| American, all choked up with gratitude at the fact that
| I do not live anywhere near the engineers' picnic site.
| But also, I was proud of my country for producing guys
| who can be ready to barbecue in less time than it take
| for guys in less-advanced nations, such as France, to
| spit.
|
| Will the 3-second barrier ever be broken? Will
| engineers come up with a new, more powerful
| charcoal-lighting technology? It's something or all of
| us to ponder this summer as we sit outside, chewing our
| hamburgers, every now and then glancing in the direction
| of West Lafayette, Indiana, looking for a mushroom
| cloud.
|
| Do _not_ miss the web site at
|
| http://ghg.ecn.purdue.edu/