I heartily support the thread jack ^^
But, to def, please pm if you want to continue this but I have not idea what you are referring to when you say detonation and combustion are not related. Having taken both our advice and read wikipedia, they are indeed closely related. I am not going to post the links.
My explanation was meant for the layman as I wrote, and no I am not trying to re-engineer the internal combustion engine. However, engineering is not some sort of magical exception to science and thus I was providing a basic explanation of octane rating and how that affects combustion based on my analytical ability and knowledge from Wikipedia.
2. I fully admit that the "candy land shit" may be just that. I was taking a wild guess. I actually would appreciate information you may have on that, it would be quite interesting.
3. What I meant to say is that composition is not taken into account when judging octane. I know that two diff substances can have the same octane. I think I made that unclear and for that I apologize.
4. I guess there could be a loophole i am missing in the science where a fuel with a high resistance to pressure based ignition (which is the basis of detonation, a pressure wave compresses the fuel and causes it to combust) and a low heat requirement, but my understanding of such matters is that one cannot seperate pressure and temperature dependance. I may be mistaken, and if so, I appologize for my candy land shit once again. CTFD mr. def.
Also, sorry I cant spell
And if i misused the word catalyst in some way, I am truly remorseful, I merely meant to say that there may be more factors outside of typical ideal combustion that will affect the process, perhaps significantly.
I dont know what htm sun is (*sadface
) Oh well....