3/8/97

BBQ, PDQ

    If you had to choose one single facet of life in Israel that desperately needs improvement, what would it be?
    Four out of five Israeli men would agree: a quicker, more efficient way to light a barbecue.
    Those four men will be pleased to hear that Modern Science is hard at work making this a Better World. (The fifth man is probably screaming for safer driving habits, or clean government, or peace and brotherhood and universal happiness. Like, who cares?)
    If you can believe what you read on the Internet, some guy in America named George has been playing with fire just so some guy in Israel named Yossi can get those kebabs to his starving children faster than ever before.
    According to the (uncredited) Net tale, George Goble, a computernik at the Purdue University engineering department, has been holding annual picnics with other engineers in West Lafayette, Indiana.
    And you know how engineers can be.
    Yossi, hopelessly inept, tosses in a match, fans the coals for half an hour, tosses in another match, fans, and accepts this with an Israeli shrug and a "that's the way it is. Yossi is obviously not an engineer.
    George obviously is. "We started by blowing the charcoal with a hair dryer," he says.  "Then we figured it would light faster if we used a vacuum cleaner."
    Yossi is using a piece of cardboard ripped from a Coke carton. It never occurred to him to bring the vacuum cleaner on a picnic.
    If you know anything about (1) engineers and (2) guys in general, you know what happened: The purpose of the charcoal-lighting shifted from searing meat to seeing how fast charcoal can be lit. Our heroic engineers were not satisfied they had exhausted all the possibilities. They tried using a propane torch. Then an acetylene torch.
    The results?
    Not bad.
    Not good enough.
    George tries compressed pure oxygen.
    Yossi tries compressing his own lungs by blowing on the coals. (He singes his eyebrows.)
    By George, George thinks, that's it!
    Or is it? (Remember, he's an engineer: he couldn't stop there.)
    While Yossi hits upon the idea of using two people, each equipped with one side of a Coke carton, thereby doubling the fanning power, George is experimenting with ... liquid oxygen.
 That's the stuff used in rocket engines. It's 295 degrees below zero Fahrenheit and 600 times the density of regular oxygen.
    As our anonymous Net correspondent wrote, "in terms of releasing energy, pouring liquid oxygen on charcoal is the equivalent of throwing a live squirrel into a room containing 50 million Labrador retrievers."
    Yossi announces to his famished family that a coal has taken. (They don't care anymore; they've begun eating the kebab raw.)
    George is about to incinerate northeast West Lafayette.
    George attaches a bucket to a three-meter-long wooden handle to dump three gallons of liquid oxygen (not sold in stores) onto a grill containing 60 pounds of charcoal and a lit cigarette for ignition. (Yeah, I know, we'll get two dozen angry readers' letters pointing out that cigarettes are dangerous.)
    Now George had something going.
    Boom!
    George creates a large fireball that reaches 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. (Yossi picks up the smoking coal and notes that it's getting warm.)
 George's charcoal is ready for cooking in what must be a world record: three seconds.
    Yossi gives up on lunch and announces to his family that supper will be ready in two hours, give or take.
    George then tries his technique on a flimsy $2.88 discount-store grill. (Which Yossi has been doing all along, though it cost him NIS 34.99.)
    KA-BOOOM!
    All that's left is a circle of charcoal with a few shreds of metal in it. "Basically, the grill evaporated," says George. "We were thinking of returning it to the store for a refund." (Yossi, blaming the grill for his failure, is thinking the same thing.)
    Says our on-the-spot reporter: "I was proud of my country for producing guys who can be ready to barbecue in less time than it takes for guys in less-advanced nations, such as France, to spit."
    Which brings up a tangential thought: What's the fastest method of dousing a barbecue?
    C'mon, George!
    Yossi experiments with a six-pack of Goldstar, to his wife's disgust. But it works; takes 95 seconds flat.
    George, can you beat that?