Yeah but looking at wood paneling gets old pretty quick. Gonna have to sling some paint around eventually.

So you're the weirdo walking around sniffing carrying pillars

Wood is far more interesting to look at than monotone paint.

What about that paint that changes color as your viewing angle changes?

+Eric Taylor iv never seen that but it sounds really expensive..

Maybe it's just because he isn't wearing a green lab coat

he has been collecting carbon for the planets benefit !!

+Stephen Mortimer aaaah... Baddum Tss.

Jack Hudler Well I posit that the BBC interview him .. as to "lack of willpower" being the answer to excess carbon.. rather than their present path !!

I hardly recognized him!

Is the building still better for the environment including all the burnt wood? In all seriousness I love the visual design and ideology behind the building

But when a concrete building has had fire it has to be broken down since the water has evaporated and weakened the construction.

Wood only releases that amount of co2 that the tree its made of has ever converted in his life time.

funny thing about wood, it can sometimes support a structure longer than steel could in a fire. What often happens is that the outside of the pillar is charred, but it provides an insulating layer from the fire. Of course it doesnt mean you dont have to replace it, but it could give you more time to get out of a burning building than steel (which can bend from heat, plus the breaking of joints from expansion) and concrete (which, while better than steel, can crack under heat)

+Azivegu maybe that's what they should have made the twin towers out of then... lol

I thought it was redeemable until the inside of the teaching lab, large wooden support posts right beside the lab benches giving a vertical burning surface a straight run to above the sprinklers. They are definitely treated with flame retardants but still. Also solar panels in Nottingham, that's forever and a day to equal it's production footprint.

The place already burned down once.

You would have to be trying pretty hard to ignite those posts, and I'm assuming they know what they're doing with the fire suppression systems to avoid any obvious problems. And it really isn't that hard to meet the production cost of solar panels. It's the economic costs when compared to other sources of energy that's the issue.

But that is what I am talking about - we should have heard at least one sentence about that issue. It is definitely an issue, and you should understand it if you do chemical research.

National Channel We did hear about it.

.... Congrats, there was a warning that unprotected piles of wood are flammable. Meanwhile in having a clue...

Thank you I suppose! I actually didn't need a warning, I already knew :)

+seigeengine Actually, it quite depends upon the wood. Some woods have about the same flammability as concrete.

MHTriBernard, while large timbers are fairly resistant to fire induced structural failure due to the reasons you mentioned, they are not more fire resistant than structural steel. Luckily they don't need to be. The temperatures required to cause steel to soften to the point of failure are far higher than anything constructed of wood could handle for any significant amount of time.

Given Dr. Licence's well known love for "energetic reactions", I would imagine he's thought of how to alleviate those sorts of risks.

It's mostly slightly fire-retardant glulam, and I would imagine the building is well insulated. There is active and passive fireproofing. Active fireproofing is alarms, sprinklers, water hoses etc. Passive fireproofing is through the architecture, material and insulation. When it's just a freestanding wooden skeleton, there's plenty of oxygen to feed the fire. But when the building is air- and watertight, the fireproofing begin to kick in. I don't know what this building has, but on similar constructions the smoke alarms would close open doors and electric windows (not lock them, obviously). When the building has been evacuated some cool systems can suffocate the fire in seconds by removing oxygen-rich air. Thus avoiding water damage. Things like rockwool in walls, floors and ceilings is also a fire and air-barrier, requiring temperatures in the thousands of centigrades to melt. Unlike foam and glasswool that's combustible at quite low temperatures.

I agree with Marcos - that wooden lab so far has the safety record of hydrogen filled Hindenburg Zeppelin !

+Nikolai Tsakov yet so do a lot of buildings, it is as easy to set fire to your house as it is to set fire to this building, people just see wood building and shout fire, it is bizarre

There are no building eating termites in the UK. Rot might be a concern but shouldn't be if they have detailed it correctly.

I be worried more about thermite eating the wood...

Termite paint! False flag operation!

waffleman383 i

We don't have those in the UK

good*

Captain Heat I wonder what insurance company would consent to covering that building.

They probably burned it down to make up for the additional construction costs and collected on the fire insurance.

You don't know how to use the word, "volition".

It looks like an autocorrect error to me

Yeah. If they wanted to do this they'd do it for the art/psychology/math department. Something were a rouge flame is a mystical unknown to the students.

I have to agree with thought process here. I doubt Pete would subject his new wooden building to some of his and Neil's old alkali metals and water experiments by the back wall. I don't think Neil using a garden sprayer to react excess potassium stuck to the side of the building would work out too well when it's made of wood. All these comments about solid wood columns not being as flammable as one would think, it doesn't look like this building is built from solid old growth timbers like they had access to in 1870. I highly doubt they've waited 300 years for trees to grow large enough to make all of those beams and columns from one solid piece of timber; they're all made from small pieces glued together. Regardless of the fire retardants added to the wood I think a chemistry lab in a wooden building is about as wise as a smoking section in a fireworks shop.

Momohhhhhh Exactly. I was typing fast on my phone. Sorry guys.

Impossible. That's banned in Britain. You'd get arrested on suspicion of terrorism just for being in the same room as that beaker.

+Sanjay Sanjayson No, that's not true

Sanjay Sanjayson nope. Look up the charcoal vs liquid oxygen video

Waiting on a bromance with the professor dressed as Frodo

he sounds and looks like a mooooh

I think those are the "plant rooms" that he talks about at 3:25 that power the fume cupboards.

I feel the same way

disagree. things often have to be done on principle first, leading the way for superior and less expensive versions. it's important for progress :)