In our last post, we had successfully opened Mirror Blaze and the Charnival.

Little did we know how popular it would be. For whatever reason, we were deluged with people on the first night of the Burn. I estimate about a thousand people went through Mirror Blaze during the first four hours it was open. So, sit back and enjoy the best we were able to video on that first frantic night!

But first, any event at Burning Man starts, as you might expect, with a dance party, organized by Charlie:

But back to the Charnival. Here’s what it looks like in full swing (things flame effecting l-r : Riskee Ball, Hellblazer, Fire Tetris, Francis the Fantastic, Pyrokinesis, with many others in the background!)

One of the most difficult things to capture with Mirror Blaze was the reactions of people to the flame effect. Much of this was due to the crowds, either because there were too many peope in the way, or because when there’s a huge lineup, it’s pretty obvious what is happening to the people in front of you. All of this is to say that the following video is one of or the best reaction video I have of someone reacting to Mirror Blaze:

And here’s a blurrier version, with more people:

I have no idea what this guy was doing or why he has a giant ice cream cone on his bike:

Here’s the art car that S calls ‘The Inappropriate Tank’, next to the Man:

Somehow, its mission complete, it drives away:

All through this time, we were directing people through Mirror Blaze, at peak, by my count, one person every 5-10 seconds. This led to significant usage of propane, leading to:

It may be difficult to see on the tank, but there’s line of snow/ice about 1/3 of the way up from the bottom of the tank. This is caused because whenever you draw off gas into the accumulator to fire off through the flame effect, more propane jumps into the gaseous phase[1], taking energy from the liquid phase and using it to provide heat of vaporization[3], with an approximate equation of:

some, warm propane(liquid) + no propane(gas) -> less, cooler propane(liquid) + some propane(gas)

And then, all of a sudden we were done! We took a moment to dance our happy dance:

And then a further moment to document our feelings at the time:

Thanks for continuing to join us on this journey! At this point, much of the stress was off, as our project had worked! There was still an entire week of running it, but also another week of adventures! Stay tuned!

[1]#lechateliersprinciple[2]

[2]This is actually a very useful principle for many applications, including human behaviour. But that is a different post entirely…

[3]Yes, I know this is actually the higher energy liquid molecules leaping off into the partial vacuum, and not being replaced because there aren’t as many gaseous molecules of the same type. This is a useful small lie similar to using the idea of evolved systems as designed systems to help understand them.