I have a new addition to my Rules to Live By: Don’t throw water on a grease fire just so you can “do something.” What this means is that sometimes you encounter a crisis or bad situation where your natural instinct is to act in some way to help out. But any action you can think or are capable of doing will only make things worse. In which case, it is better to do nothing.
No matter how benevolent our intentions are, doing nothing is a superior option to making things worse.
Looking at this literally, most fires can be quenched with water. But not a grease fire. That’s because when you throw water on a grease fire, the first few bits of water to hit the fire flash-boil. Steam has approximately 1000 times the volume of water. This rapid expansion displaces the burning microdroplets of grease at a high speed, causing them to fly all over the place.… Read more