Talk:Thermal lance

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[edit] Use in Sci-Fi

Is it appropriate to say something a term is misused in science fiction? Cannot fiction writers appropriate or make up any term they want?

• I tend to agree, I mean a science fiction writer would not be misusing the term "Thermal Lance" in a story if he made it into a Ray-Gun type weapon. In Sci-Fi it doesn't matter if there is already a real world object with that name, it still makes sense in the fictional universe created, you can call it whatever you want. --Hibernian 19:59, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
• But it confuses real-world people reading science fiction, growing up thinking that a thermic lance is a sort of raygun. Anthony Appleyard 20:32, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thermic Lances in the Steel Industry

In the steel industry, we often use simple 6 to 8 foot long iron pipes (attached to an oxygen valve) as thermic lances. But we also tend to use aluminum shot mixed into the material we are cutting in order to increase cutting ability of the lance.

Wouldn't this mixture constitute thermite, contrary to what this article explicity says? —Ben FrantzDale 18:42, 1 October 2006 (UTC)