Here's the visual effect for those less fotunate than I in missing the opening
ceremony (actually, it was very interesting, as each country's athletes came out
they gave a little political snapshot of the country (ie, and watch iran and
iraq come out one after the other.  This is the only event in which they would
accept these positions... blah blah blah)):

Lady carries torch onto pool of still water (walking on water effect).  She
stands in center and turns around.  The torch is brought to the surface of the
water, about 4 feet in front of her, where a flame shoots up.  You can see the
hint of a ring under the water now, slowly rising a bit, and the flame spreads
in a circle around her.  They pause for a second, then the ring goes fairly
straight up (it has a 6ft diameter hole in its center, so the lady stays put),
about 8ft, with a circular curtain of fire above it, and a circular curtain of
water below.  As the water slows, the lady walks out from under the cauldron
(which is now just a disk supended from an arm on the side of the stadium) and
holds the smaller torch up in front of the crowd.  Cue the crowd cheering, cue
the caudron moving up a pair of tracks a foot above the waterfall on the slope
of the stadium, with seating on either side...

Only the cauldron doesn't move.  It does make a few lurches.  At this point I'm
sure someone is running full bore from the control room to behind the waterfall
and cauldron contraption.  The lady with the torch is pretty tired of holding it
up, and is probably wondering how much longer she has.

About a full minute or two after the initial lurch, the cauldron lurches a few
more times, then starts its ascent (very slowly) up the waterfal.  When it gets
to the top, a larch diamter shaft inserts itself into the center opening of the
disk, and the raises the disk from the arm (completely detaching it from the
arm) and raises it another 30ft or so above the stadium.  Viola, an olympic
torch complete with handle.

The flame was about 1-2ft high until she was out of the way, then they turned it
up more.  I'm assuming the convection currents brought her enough o2, and if not
she didn't have to stay there for more than half a minute anyway.  Probably got
pretty warm, being roasted on all sides though...

-Adam

Bob Ammerman wrote:
>
> > First, they get a young lady to stand **inside** the "ring of
> > fire", and light it. A little more gas, and poof - roasted lady.
> > Oh my.
>
> I didn't see this. Do you mean that the torch was a supersize burner like on
> a gas range, and the lighter stood in the middle? Did anybody consider what
> might happen to available O2 in that environment?
>
> Bob Ammerman
> RAm Systems
> (contract development of high performance, high function, low-level
> software)
>
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