"Wake up, Conrad!" K.O. shook the boy's shoulder.
Conrad at first didn't know where he was, and why he felt so stiff in his back. A minute later he knew: he was on a train, with his old friend, and they were heading to the Kingdom of Phosphor. They slept on the train, that's why his back and neck hurt a bit.
"We will soon arrive, so it is high time to wake up!" K.O. smiled, and stretched himself. His joints also felt stiff from the sleeping posture.
Conrad rubbed his eyes.
"What time is it?" He asked.
"Half past five."
"It's awfully early!"
"Exciting things always happen early in the morning and late at night. So wake up, and stand on your legs, because we'll be right there!"
Conrad stood up, half-asleep, and followed K.O.. The train stopped in the next minute, and they got off. The morning breeze woke the boy up, because itwas full of some strange smell.
"What is this smell?" Conrad asked curiously. "It isn't stinky, but peppery."
"It is the smell of the Phosporus. Do you see that lilac mound?"
"Great! That's why we have been coming here!" Conrad were happy. "And we quickly find them!"
"You could collect them, but we don't need them. We are here because of another kind of Phosphorus."
"Could we transform them?"
"It is not recommended." K.O. said, and his face turned to be gloomy.
"Oh no! Why?"
"That mound is from lilac, or red Phosphorus, but we need white for the lighter. But the white ones are violent, they need a special care. "
"Are they allotropes?" Conrad asked, but his intonation didn't sign that it would have been a question.
"Yep. They are allotropes. The red Phosphorus is a giant molecule."
"Are they similar to the yarn we made?"
"Similar. The red phosphorus is looking like connected chicken beaks."
"Don't tell Valerie about it!" Conrad smirked. "She would start to feel sorry for the little chickens right away!"
"Okay!" K.O. laughed. " I will replace chicken beaks to necklaces for her! Would it be better?"
"Necklaces?" Conrad sighed. " She already has a bracelet, she now working on having earrings, but when she hears the word that necklace, she will immediately need one and we could come back here."
"The girls are just like that! They love jewelry." K.O. patted Conrad shoulder. "Don't forget it! In ten years you will be happy for this knowledge."
"Okay, okay." The boy nodded, and collected the whole mound of red Phosphorus. Just for sure. "Where can we find white Phosphorus?"
"Over there!" The old man pointed to a road sign.
"Great! It look like there is a whole lake from them, so we could travel soon to the next Kingdom!" He said gladly.
"Are you afraid of being late from the festival?" K.O. asked the hyped up boy.
Conrad nodded.
"I want to be there in time!"
"Don't worry! We have one day here, and another in the Kingdom of Sulfur, and one and a half day until the festival. We will be attending a rocket-making workshop in two days, so we will still have half a day to prepare for the festival."
"I hope everything will go on smoothly!" Conrad sighed, but calmed down a little.
"Elie promised, that she and Valerie would deal with the administration today, so everything will definitely go on smoothly. Trust them!" K.O. said, before Conrad could say something. "Come on! We have to walk a bit to reach the lake!"
Conrad obediently walked next to his friend, but the road to the was boring.
"It is just greenery around us. Where are the towns? Is here any?"
"Of course! This kingdom also has towns, but the more interesting things happens out side the towns."
"It is boring!" He whined a bit.
"Why don't you hunt for the little ones here? There are a few of them, in the grass!" He pointed toward the meadow."
"I am not in the mood!" He said half-hearted.
"So someone is still sleepy, isn't he?" K.O. asked jokingly. He was aware, that the waking hour was too early for the boy, but they didn't have time to work for the temples here and in the next Kingdom to sleep in a bed. "Don't worry, we will sleep a bit in lunchtime."
"Why?" The boy asked, stunned.
"Because it will be too hot for the white Phosphorus molecules. They will be very active, when the weather becomes hot. Their craziness also increase. So we will be sleeping for practical reasons. And because we're both sleepy, and we will spent the next two nights on trains."
They both were walking in silence for a while. Conrad caught some little ones, who were on the road before them, as they had been asking for to be collected. That activity finally woke him up completely.
"Why we use white Phosphorus in the ignition mixture?" He asked.
"Because it ignites very easily."
"How easy?"
"Very-very easily. In the old times, white Phosphorus were used in matches."
"What kind of matches?" Conrad asked puzzled. It was okay to use a ball, made of Carbons for playing football matches, but what would they do with the Phosphorus on the field?
"Matchsticks."
Conrad shook his head, he still didn't understood at all. K.O. also didn't understand.
"There are no sticks around a football field." Conrad said, and all the strands of K.O.'s hair were darting to the sky with surprise.
"Have you ever ignite fire?" He asked, to cover up his confusion. Conrad shook his head. "Not even a gas stove?"
"We have electronic stove, it heats food, after you turn the button."
"Do you have a fireplace in your house?"
"Yes we have one. Electronic."
K.O.'s surprise could no longer be greater. Not even his trouble. How could anyone explain to a child how important it was to light a fire if he had never had to do so?
"Have you ever seen someone smoking?"
Conrad nodded, and K.O. was relieved. Sometimes bad habits can also become helpful.
"Have you also seen how cigarettes are lit?"
"With a lighter."
"Before using a lighter, people used matchsticks. Little pieces of wood, with chemicals on the top of the pieces."
"Oh. How?" Conrad asked, like who was totally lost. "Matchsticks are not burning. We used them on Math lessons."
"You have to lit them, before lit anything else with them." K.O. said, but he himself felt his explanation a little bit odd. "Okay, okay, let's start in the very beginning. I think you know that taming fire was an important thing in the history of mankind."
"Yes, but nowadays we don't use fire for cooking, or heating." Conrad said proudly of the progress made by the mankind. "We use electricity."
"Where do you think the electricity comes from?" K.O. snorted.
"From power plants."
"What kind of source they use for making electricity?"
"Wind, water, sun, nuclear."
"You left coal from the list." Seeing the boy's surprised look, K.O. continued. "They are still using burnable things, like coal, wood, gas to produce electricity. So these things are burning in the power plant, to give you electricity. Although you don't use fire locally, you are still using mediately."
"There's no meaning to use fire to turn into electricity that we have to use for heating!" Conrad shook his head.
"Yes, it's really a big waste. But the cities grew too big, so the leaders solved it so that the residents could breath as well. Burning consumes oxygen. We also consumes oxygen for breathing, so using electricity conserves the air for us to breath in the cities."
"But there's plenty of oxygen! The trees produce!"
"How many trees do you see in an average city?" K.O. asked.
"Very little." He replied in a sad voice.
"It couldn't even be put anywhere because everything is concreted." The old man nodded. "Cars and transport also consume oxygen in cities, so we have to use electricity to spare oxygen to breathe."
"Then coal-fired power plants do not consume oxygen?"
"They do. Not in the cities, but far from them. Locally they do consume oxygen, like every burning consumes oxygen."
Conrad looked at the old man in disbelief, who didn't think it was a smart idea to enlighten the boy right now that there were other types of burns as well.
"Three things are needed to burn. Some combustible material, oxygen, and some energy to reach the flash point of the material."
"If one is not, is it still possible to light a fire?"
"No. Forests don't ignite on their own either, do they?"
"If lightning strikes, they do." Conrad argued.
"In that case, lightning provides the energy needed to start the combustion."
"So we really need all three of them lo light a fire!"
"Yes. The prehistoric people were probably only able to get a fire if it had already set fire somewhere. Let's say the lightning cut into a tree. They later realized that some special stones could also be used to light a fire. By then, they had an easier time because they didn't have to feed the fire all the time. They were allowed to fall asleep and could be re-ignited the fire, whenever they wanted. It was also a rather complicated method, but it stayed this complicated until about a hundred years ago."
"There was no electricity until then?" Conrad was surprised.
"There were batteries, but no power came from the plug. There wasn't even a plug."
"How could people survive in such conditions?" Conrad cried.
"You haven't used it for three weeks either!" The old man smiled, and caressed the boy's head.