Charlie seeks out an engineering professor to help him recreate a fire scenario to solve an arson case.Charlie seeks out an engineering professor to help him recreate a fire scenario to solve an arson case.Charlie seeks out an engineering professor to help him recreate a fire scenario to solve an arson case.
- Director
- Writers
- Stars
Photos
- David Sinclair
- (credit only)
- Amita Ramanujan
- (credit only)
- Professor
- (uncredited)
- Female Student
- (uncredited)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Featured reviews
Did you know
- TriviaThis episode features actress Sophina Brown as Bianca Styles, a member of the ELM, the enviromental activist group heavily featured in this episode. Brown would later come back to the show as a series regular playing a different character named Nikki Betancourt, a brash new agent assigned to Don's unit at the FBI.
- GoofsWhite phosphorus is pyrophoric, which means it will self ignite when exposed to oxygen and burn. Which is why it is stored in water. But it does not explode and certainly does not detonate as shown at the end of the episode.
- Quotes
[Professor Waldie, special guest star Bill Nye, the Science Guy, is looking at a tall taper candle lit before him on a desk, with Charlie and Larry watching on]
Bill Waldie: A back draft is a fascinating phenomena. We can demonstrate it with this candle. It's also called a smoke explosion. The flame causes the hot gases rising from the candle to...
[he blows out the candle, which promptly flickers back alight]
Bill Waldie: reignite.
Dr. Larry Fleinhardt: Somehow I missed the fact that the CalSci Engineering Department had a combustion lab.
Bill Waldie: It's pretty neat, huh? We converted it from an old laundry room.
Charlie Eppes: Well, thank you Professor Waldie, for setting this whole thing up.
Bill Waldie: Bill, please. And you don't have to thank me. Creating the conditions for a back draft? It's just, way cool.
[He walks them over to the miniature crime scene setup]
Bill Waldie: Well, here's our booth. And, as noted in the arson report, we have: insulated compartment, combustible ceiling. Now, this geometry will starve the fire just enough, so that when this door is opened, oxygen will rush inside, creating a gravity current of cold air and hot gasses and, boom
[he snaps his fingers]
Bill Waldie: smoke explosion, aka, a back draft. All we need now is the heat source.
Dr. Larry Fleinhardt: Ah, yeah, that would be me.
[He pulls a pack of cigarettes from his jacket and pulls one out]
Dr. Larry Fleinhardt: I thought we could use the same brand that the arson investigator found.
[He wraps one cigarette in a new book of matches and hands it to Bill, who sets it in the booth]
Dr. Larry Fleinhardt: And you're ready to go.
Charlie Eppes: Where'd you get a cigarette?
Dr. Larry Fleinhardt: [smirks] I know a guy.
Charlie Eppes: Okay, so, Stevens said that the arsonist probably placed the ignitor near some fuel, like, like a seat cushion.
Bill Waldie: Mm-hm.
[He picks up a singed piece of cushion]
Bill Waldie: This type of foam is an excellent hydrocarbon-based fuel.
[He snaps a piece off and sets it in the booth with the cigarette and matches, then the three of them don protective eye glasses, and Bill strikes a match to light the tip of the cigarette]
Bill Waldie: Okay.
[Bill shuts the door, sealing the booth, and after a moment the cigarette ignites the book of matches, however the flame dies as fast as it ignited, leaving the foam untouched]
Bill Waldie: [Charlie watches a temperature gauge creep up, starting at 300 degrees Fahrenheit, quickly jumping to 400 and climbing]
Charlie Eppes: Temperature's rising.
Bill Waldie: When the temperature inside reaches 600 degrees, we'll open the door and add oxygen.
Charlie Eppes: Okay, well. If the scorch marks and flame indicators were recorded for a 5:41 AM start time
[he glances behind him at some other gauges]
Charlie Eppes: then wind and outside pressure are a check.
Dr. Larry Fleinhardt: And at 600 degrees we should be good to go on a back draft.
[Larry steps behind a protective, see-through curtain, and Charlie watches the temp gauge skip past 500 degrees on its way to 600 and ducks behind his own curtain]
Charlie Eppes: We're almost there.
[Bill extends a thin metal tool from behind his own curtain, using it to grasp the booth door as Larry mutters Easy, and Bill pops the door open with a hiss - but there's no explosion. They all come out from behind their curtains, puzzled]
Bill Waldie: Huh. Did we ventilate the booth properly?
Charlie Eppes: According to my calculations, yeah, we did.
[He glances back at his chalkboard full of equations]
Charlie Eppes: Heat release, burn rate, air, time.
Dr. Larry Fleinhardt: There's no error in your math...
[Charlie scoffs at him]
Dr. Larry Fleinhardt: No, no, that's a statement, not a question.
Charlie Eppes: [quietly, as realization dawns on him] The booth fire couldn't have been caused by a back draft.
- Crazy credits[This appears on the beginning of the episode] 6013 Fires 30,000 BTU's 700 Arson Deaths 1 Match
- SoundtracksFirestarter
(uncredited)
Written by Liam Howlett, Keith Flint, Trevor Horn, Anne Dudley, J.J. Jeczalik, Paul Morley, Gary Langan and Kim Deal
Performed by The Prodigy