Hank Green of SciShow explained why smoke blows in your face and follows you around a fire no matter where you’re sitting.
You know how you somehow end up getting smoke in your eyes wherever you stand around a bonfire? Well, it turns out that’s not a curse! It’s much more easily explained with physics.
As it turns out, the human body stops the airflow that lets the smoke escape. If that body was not there, the smoke would just dissipate.
…the real key to understanding why smoke keeps blowing in your face is that the rising air doesn’t just rise on its own. It is pushed by the air around it. Because when hot air moves away from the fire, the air that pushed it keeps right on going and fills the gap that the hot air left behind. And this is where you come in.