Maker Thursday: How Does a Lighter Work? You've used one a hundred times. This week we take it apart. A lighter packs a surprising amount of engineering into something you'd throw away without a thought. The piezo element that makes a spark from a click, the valve metering out gas, the flint wheel on the older ones. We'll pull a few apart and look at what's actually going on inside. The point is less about lighters and more about the habit: pick up an everyday object, open it, and work out how someone solved the problem.