Eli5: a question about fire

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When fire is created. In which like methane and oxygen molecules in a burner they move around and when he give them a spark they gain energy and move faster and break apart. And hit each other and loose energy in friction and sound, but what is this saying that they create more energy than the energy required to start the reaction. I really don’t understand that

In: Chemistry

5 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

If you have a bowling ball at the top of a hill, and it only takes a slight nudge to get it rolling, the bowling ball will have a vastly higher amount of energy at its top speed than the energy it took to nudge it off the top of the hill.

Similarly, the spark was a relatively small amount of energy which causes ignition of large amount of potential energy stored in the rest of the methane/oxygen.

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