The reaction is an extreme fire hazard and fire safety protocols must be in place.

Greetings fellow nerds.

In this video we're going to start a charcoal barbecue... with chemistry.

Here is our charcoal grill, and here is our charcoal.

Let me open that up.

I should probably take the charcoal out of the actual bag, but who has time for that?

Now normally charcoal is started with some lighter fluid, but since we're nerds,

I'm going to use a mixture of 250 grams potassium chlorate and 50 grams sugar.

The potassium chlorate is a powerful oxidant that provides oxygen directly to the reaction mixture.

The sugar and charcoal is the fuel. This will burn very hot and hopefully get our charcoal started.

Now for the fun part, lighting it up.

Yeah! Forget the manly way of starting a barbecue, this is the nerdy way.

Leave the pile of charcoal as is and give it about 10 to 20 minutes to get up to full temperature and ash over before spreading them out.

Here we are, spread out while nice and glowing hot.

Put the grill on and now you can get cooking.

And that is how a chemist lights a barbecue.

Thanks for watching.

And for more summertime party tricks, most of which you can actually do without needing to be a chemist like me,

check out the collaboration "10 mind-blowing tricks for summertime parties" by my friend, the king of random, on his channel.