If the two are both highly reactive and easily flammable (like the Hindenburg disaster for example), how do they put out flames? Same question with Sodium and Chlorine, one being highly explosive when it touches water and the other being a deadly gas, but combined they make tasty rocks.
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Water can put out fire not because of some special reaction but just because it stops the oxygen needed for burning from reaching the fire.
To answer your second question, the atoms of the elements when combined become less reactive. On their own, the atoms have free space and they are looking for something to combine with (this can cause dangerous reactions with some other elements). When together, they occupy each other’s ‘free spots’ so they have ‘no desire’ to react with (join with) other atoms.
Think of hydrogen and oxygen as opposite poles of a magnet. When you bring them near each other, they snap together, forming H2O. It’s this snap that releases energy, not the separate poles of the magnet individually. Similarly, it’s the coming together of Hydrogen and Oxygen that releases energy. Not hydrogen by itself or oxygen by itself.
When oxygen and hydrogen burn they combine to form water. Since the oxygen and hydrogen have already burned, they are generally not available to burn again.
When two or more atoms combine into a stable molecule, they become –well, combined. Their shape becomes more complex and larger. Their components are now sharing electrons which shifts around their magnetic/electrical charges on the structure. So, naturally, these new larger molecules are going to interact with the things around them very differently than their smaller components would. Think of it like chemical puzzle pieces, or housekeys, where even slight differences in shape or size can radically change an item’s functioning.
Water is the waste product of burning hydrogen and oxygen.
When they are burned, they create a bond and in the process a lot of heat is released. The result of them bonding, is water.
In order to break that bond, the same amount of energy that was released during the burning process, would have to be put back in.
However, long before a temperature is reached that could break this bond, the water will boil away and by boiling away it takes heat away from the fire.
And before it boils away it creates a film over the flammable material and keeps it separated from the oxygen in the air, that is needed in order to burn.
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