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Stan Meyer's ninth-grade question: why doesn't the air burn?

Stan Meyer said a question from his ninth-grade science class shaped his water car: when you light a match, why doesn't the air burn up? Because most of the air is nitrogen and argon, gases that don't burn. That matters for hydrogen. Raw hydrogen burns at about 325 centimetres a second, natural gas

The archive's own copy, 29 September 2026 12 MB

One of the shorts. Flip through all of them.

What was shown

Stan Meyer said a question from his ninth-grade science class shaped his water car: when you light a match, why doesn't the air burn up? Because most of the air is nitrogen and argon, gases that don't burn. That matters for hydrogen. Raw hydrogen burns at about 325 centimetres a second, natural gas at about 40, so hydrogen in an engine built for gasoline fires far too fast. Mix in gases that don't burn and the flame slows down. That's textbook, and it is what Stan built his burners and injectors to do, with air and recycled exhaust: a flame held at around 47 centimetres a second. The tapes are on stanslegacy.com.

About the voices. The narrator is NeuralStan, an AI voice the archive uses for its made films. Where you hear Stan Meyer, it is Stan: every word of his is cut from an original recording, and nothing he says was synthesised.

Sources

shorts stanmeyer hydrogen combustion physics science waterfuelcell