Game Theory: Mario's Secret Fire Power is... Rocket Fuel!

[Music] wow this is so cool actually it's totally hot watch out goombas here comes matio actually come to think of it this is probably a lot more humane than stomping on their heads too i've always felt bad about crushing another living creature to death with my own body weight yahoo here we go i am in agony excruciating agony this has to be the worst way to die why why would you do this why why couldn't i die like my brother tony he was crushed in a single instant his life ended with no suffering mamma mia [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hello internet welcome to game theory the show that's like a super mushroom for your brain making it grow to twice the size which also means that it'd be so big that it barely fit into your skull anymore oh god what have i done so many big brained tiny skull theorists out there anyway super mario 3d world just made its way to the nintendo switch i gotta say it's great news because it's truly one of the wii u's best titles which come to think of it ain't as high of praise as i originally thought considering the top 10 list for that system includes a remake from two generations before a cross-platform indie game a less good version of a switch game and the original tech demo that it came packaged with not a lot of competition there anyway it's a great mario game and it would be a shame for it to remain trapped on a system that nobody bothered to own it's also great news because it gives me an excuse to talk about the popular plumber and one of gaming's most iconic power-ups the fire flower this one's been around since the original super mario brothers and has made an appearance in basically every mario game since even super mario odyssey which replaced the traditional mario power-ups with hat powers still managed to squeeze in a cameo appearance for the fire flower with peach showing up wearing a traditional kimono in bowser's japanese inspired fortress decorated with you guessed it the fire flower anyway we all know how this works right needs no introduction considering it is the most iconic power up of all time i feel like that's not even overstating it mario and fireflower i mean name a more iconic duo you can't but you can try down in the comments below with one touch it turns mario's outfit red and white while granting him the all-important ability to throw fireballs simple as that clear as crystal or is it i literally just said we all know how this works but do we have we stopped to question what exactly is going on here what are mario's fireballs exactly i mean they can't just be pure flame after all flames are just burning gas and as such we'd expect hot gas to rise but what mario is using is affected by gravity these things are being pulled downward and not just being pulled downward but also bouncing off the ground it's a detail that we all take for granted because we've seen it going on for decades but any explanation for what he's actually using here has to account for that bouncing and then you got the fact that despite supposedly being balls of fire mario still seems perfectly capable of using them underwater so this has to be some sort of special flame in short we have three things to answer if we want to address this properly one what can get set on fire two bounce off the ground and three also burn underwater what exactly are mario's fireballs it's a simple question with a not so simple answer and that makes it the perfect topic for game theory now this isn't the first time that i've tried to tackle the topic of mario's fireballs back in 2017 i did a collab with grant thompson the king of random to solve how fireballs could burn underwater i count myself extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to spend that time with him because two years ago he tragically passed away much much too soon rest in peace buddy you are remembered now on the beach that day what grant wanted to test was thermite a flammable metal powder that's used in welding scale of danger from one to ten what would you list this at i'm gonna put this up there at a solid tin wow that is some quality youtube science thing going on we packed tennis balls full of thermite and dropped them underwater to see if they'd continue to burn i love the smell of thermite in the afternoon matpat is a natural thermite grenade maker let's not spread the word about that one too widely shall we and the conclusion was that yeah thermite did manage to continue burning while submerged in water giving us underwater fireballs see if i was a koopa i would totally be afraid of that i'm a human and i'm totally afraid of that so good job mario however while it did prove the point of underwater fire i wasn't convinced that we had solved what mario's fireballs actually were i mean one i don't think mario's carrying around extra tennis balls in his overall pockets just to load up with flammable powder but more importantly the thermite reaction leaves behind molten iron and i i just don't see a lot of slag metal laying around the mushroom kingdom after i'm done rampaging through it with my fireballs of death which means today i want to look for an alternate solution to start with we need to establish one thing mario's fireballs aren't just pure fire in fact technically they can't be pure fire because well fire isn't actually a thing fire is a chemical reaction that produces among other things a flame which is the hot gas that you probably mentally picture when you hear the word fire now why bother to make the distinction between fire and flame well we know that a pure flame wouldn't look like what we see mario tossing pure hot gas wouldn't bounce along the ground like a rubber ball obviously mario is throwing some kind of chemical cocktail that's able to sustain an ongoing combustion reaction it's more of a flaming projectile thus mario's fireball wouldn't be a ball of fire so much as it is a ball on fire of course that still leaves us with the obvious question a ball of what what does it take to create a flaming bouncing underwater projectile well it all comes down to having the ingredients needed to sustain a fire if you've ever paid attention during smokey the bears safety lessons or you watched our episode about fire pokemon from four years ago you might remember the concept of the fire triangle which is a simple model of the three basic ingredients that you need to sustain a fire a fire needs one heat two fuel and three an oxidizing agent technically the fire triangle recently poke evolved into a fire triforce but uh for today the triangle is going to be enough anyway without any of these three ingredients the chemical reaction just can't continue for instance 99 of the time the oxidizing agent is just oxygen air we happen to live on a planet with a lot of oxygen just floating around all the time in case you haven't noticed and fire really appreciates that fact but if you want to extinguish a fire you can smother it with a blanket covering the fire deprives it of oxygen thus the triangle is broken and fire can't survive this is also how most fire extinguishers work they spray carbon dioxide which surrounds the fire effectively smothering it or you know you can always rely on your good old pal h2o just drop the flaming object into a bucket of water and bam no oxygen which means no combustion reaction which means no more flames except clearly mario's fireballs do work underwater which leaves us with the big question of how or has one popular japanese v tuber put it water in the fire why what well like i said 99 of the time oxygen is the oxidizing agent for a fire which leaves one percent of the time when it's not and mario's fireballs apparently fall into that one percent a rare edge case a situation where you use an oxidizing agent other than o2 to create your fire now you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure this stuff out but it would help because this is one of the big problems that actual rocket scientists have to deal with think about it in space there's no error that means that in space there's no oxygen floating around to be a part of your combustion reaction so how do you get a combustion reaction in the vacuum of space well one answer is to bring along your own oxygen in liquid form that's what was used by the aerojet rocketdyne rs-25 engine that was used on the nasa space shuttle though that probably isn't going to work as well for mario's purposes considering that liquid oxygen needs to be stored at very very very very very very very low temperatures we're talking in the minus 400 degrees fahrenheit or negative 240 celsius range in fact the rs-25 is actually classified as a cryogenic rocket engine because its propellants are stored at such low temperatures now i know mario can handle the coal he does tend to run through icy landscapes in just his overalls but carrying sub-zero cryogenic ice balls in his pants only to ignite them later doesn't make a whole lot of sense but really any source of oxygen will do for instance the reason thermite powder was able to burn underwater in that king of random experiment was that it's made of aluminum powder and iron oxide the aluminum metal acts as the fuel and the iron oxide as you might be able to tell from the word oxide provides oxygen just like oxyclean is powered by the air you breathe activated by the water that you and i drink see how you have some oxygen os floating around near the edges of its chemical structure well that right there is why it's your oxidizing agent fire is basically just a super fast version of a type of reaction that exists everywhere in our world something called a reduction oxidation reaction or redox reaction for short oxidation is the loss of electrons and reduction confusingly enough is the gaining of electrons it's called reduction because you're gaining electrons which are negatively charged so you're losing charge thus reduction anyway it's just a fancy way of saying electron swap and if you look at what oxygen is actually doing here its role is to accept electrons from the fuel so in our quest to figure out what's going on with mario's fireballs all we need is something that has a similar chemical composition to what we saw in the thermites iron oxide examples of oxidizing agents that have been used in rockets include nitrogen tetroxide which was used by the apollo 11 lunar module and ammonium perchlorate which is frequently used in rocket boosters see all those nice juicy o's waiting around the edges of the chemical structure waiting to accept electrons and you see it's that second one the ammonium perchlorate that i want to focus on because unlike o2 oxygen which is a gas at room temperature ammonium perchlorate is a solid and that's good because remember the three things that we need to make mario's fireballs happen it needs to be able to bounce which means that it needs to be affected by gravity and you know solids tend to bounce better than gases being a solid also means that we can mix it with the fuel source we can create a chemical cocktail that provides both the fuel source and the oxidizing agent that we need to make combustion happen all in one neat little package just like we're seeing happen with mario's fireballs for the fuel source most rockets just use powdered aluminum the same kind of stuff that i talked about with the thermite so we're gonna go with that but there's still one missing piece here we need a way for all of it to stick together and it's here that mario's fireballs really deliver the surprise it all comes down to rubber yeah silicon rubber no joke here on youtube you can find people doing diy make your own rocket fuel videos where they bind aluminum powder and ammonium perchlorate which again remember is the same stuff that nasa is using in their actual rocket boosters and they're combining these things with tubes of silicone rubber that you can find at home depot rubber as in bouncy rubber and by the way the idea of using rubber or something similar as a binding agent for rocket fuel isn't just something that youtubers are doing in 2013 private space company virgin galactic announced that the latest tests of their suborbital space vehicle were being done with fuel that used a key ingredient for synthetic rubber virgin galactic's own press releases describe the fuel as quote rubber-like so what are mario's fireballs exactly well they're quite literally an advanced form of rocket fuel rubbery bouncy rocket fuel aluminum powder plus ammonium perchlorate plus a little bit of silicone rubber to bind it all together that is in my estimation the only way to explain how they're able to burn continuously even when underwater or in the vacuum-like conditions of super mario galaxy it's also an explanation for why they bounce like a rubber ball when he throws them it also also explains why enemies die on contact considering that solid rocket boosters can reach temperatures of more than 5 000 degrees fahrenheit that's 2760 degrees celsius sorry goomba that's gonna leave a mark which leaves the only thing unexplained in this theory is why it all comes from a flower but hey that's just a theory a game theory thanks for watching you know what's not rocket science saving money with the sponsor for today's episode honey theorists these days i like to stay cozy on the couch as i do most of my shopping online and while i'm browsing for matching pjs for me and the fam's next movie night honey is there to one up my shopping experience honey is the definitive free browser extension that you can get on your computer in just two easy clicks as you browse one of honey's 30 000 supported sites for the perfect mario onesie to wear to your next rewatch of the 90s classic it is scouring the internet for promo codes to save you money and automatically test them out at checkout once honey finds you a deal all you have to do is click apply coupons and watch as your total drops faster than a yoshi 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Channel: The Game Theorists

Views: 2,316,533

Keywords: mario, super mario, super mario bros, luigi, fire flower, mario fire flower, smash bros, super smash bros, paper mario, mario kart, paper mario origami king, mario kart home circuit, mario 64, mario world, mario odyssey, mario maker, super mario world, mario theory, nintendo, nintendo direct, nintendo theory, game theorists, game theory, matpat, game theory mario, mario vs luigi, super mario 3d world

Id: -THACixg0pk

Length: 14min 26sec (866 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 20 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

it all makes sense

[u/TheXTrunner]

Why do the oxygen molecule uses the water molecule picture? And isn't the reason water extinguish fire because it cools the fire down rather than cutting the oxygen?

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