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!
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Temperature is a measurement of how much particles are moving. Adding heat makes them move faster because you’re adding energy. Melting is when particles are moving fast enough that they’re spreading away from each other. This is a consistent temperature becauE the particles move a certain amount based on the structure of the molecules.
Boiling point (simplified) is when the particles are moving so fast that they spread really far away from each other.
Water boils at 100C (assuming it’s not mixed with salt or anything like that). It’ll boil at 100 or higher. Making the temperature much higher doesn’t make it boil any hotter, it just makes it boil fasterbecause it’s a whole bunch of energy added at once. This is the concept behind flash boiling.
Jet fuel gives off a certain amount of heat when it burns no matter if it’s a drop or a million gallons. So in theory adding more jet fuel does not make it melt more it just makes it able to reach more particles faster. The steel still has a limit. For how much each particle can move based on the energy the fuel is giving off.
Jet fuel can’t melt steel beams but it can soften them because the particles are moving and spreading, just not enough to liquify it. The argument for 9/11 and not melting steel beams is more complicated because it’s not just heat from jet fuel being applied to the beams, it’s pressure, distribution of weight, etc. that’s not your question so I’m not diving into that.
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