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
FYI: Melting and boiling points depend on temperature and pressure, but for your examples we stay at atmospheric pressure.
>But water can be hotter than 100 degrees, it’ll just boil off faster.
At normal pressure it can’t, liquid water will remain at 100C and just convert to water vapor more quickly. That vaport then gets hotter than 100C.
>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.
Waxes are composite materials, where you can fine tune properties such as the melting point. Some oils are mixed into the wax to reduce the melting point. That is somewhat similar to ice/salt mixtures. Salt reduces the melting point of water from 0C down to -21C. (As a general rule of thumb: Adding something (that is not volatile itself) to a liquid lowers the melting point and raises the boiling point.
In general you have to distinguish between the temperature of a reaction (such as burning, of a certain material which is more or less fixed depending on how much oxygen is available), and accumulation of heat and what it does to a material. In the steel beam example you are referring to, you kind of need to compare it to ice in a glacier or forging of metal. It is not melted, but it is more ductile under all this pressure. And increased temperature might not have been able o melt the steel, but ductility was increased for a long time.
Latest Answers