This might be really dumb, I understand everything has it’s own melting and boiling points, like water boils at 100 degrees celcius. But water can be hotter than 100 degrees, it’ll just boil off faster.
What I don’t understand is how they have lower melting point waxes when it’s melted by the same wick as a normal candle. Its melting point is lower but can’t it still get hotter? There’s also the jet fuel can’t melt steel beams argument (not a conspiracy theoriest, just genuinely confused) so would more fuel make it hotter? Is there a limit to the heat something can produce? One match is hot but a house on fire is much hotter.
Edit – I can’t believe I got something we did in science classes at 12 years old wrong. As pointed out below (thanks all!) water does not go higher than 100 degrees Celsius. I think that’s where most of my confusion was coming from. Thank you guys for your help!
In: 7
Melting and burning are fundementally different.
First, an important rule to remember, when some matyer (water, wax, etc) is going through a phase change, its temperture DOES NOT CHANGE. You can test this with bouling water. (assuming you are at sea level, with plain water) Water will boil at 100°C. So if you look at a thermometer on a pot of water, you will see the temperture slowly rise until it hits 100°, then it will start boiling. It will never go over 100°. This is why boiling water is so useful for baking and cooking. We know exactly what temperature it is. Even if you turn up your stove burner to 200%, it will not go above 100° C, it will just boil faster. This is because to change a liquid into a gas (or solid into liquid) requires energy. Any extra energy you give to the material just makes that phase change faster.
Burning is something completely different. Burning a material is not aphase change, it is actually a chemical reaction. When you burn wood you do not end up with wood in the air, you dont have wood at all anymore. Burning is generally the process of using oxygen to break the bonds of a material, whoch releases energy. Wood during the burning process turns into carbon dioxide and water while releasing heat. There is no necessary hard limit for how hot something can burn by itself, but instead you need to understand how much enery is being released, and how quickly that energy is able to dissipate.
For example, a wood campfire is likely not going to be hot enough to melt throughyour metal grill. Although the energy the qood releases will heat the metal, it will also quickly escape into the surrounding air. However, under the right circumstances, you can make a wood fired forge which WILL be hot enough to melt metal. A campfire might get to around 600-900°C, a forge fuelled with wood might reach double or triple that temperature as it turns wood into charcoal and the charcoal burns into ash. But a forge requires very specific designs, such as a small compartment, focused heat into a specific area, a constant supply of wood and usually good airflow. If you burn more wood, faster, in the same space, it will generate more heat.
Now, because of physics and the fact we live in the real world, there are pretty practical hard limits on how hot certain materials get when they burn. We can increase efficiency up to a point, but practically it can’t go past that.
Latest Answers