is candle flame a plasma? (what even is plasma?)
i’ve always wanted to know what really is a flame… is it plasma? is it magic?
what is it? i know it’s a chemical reaction with the oxygen in the air.
In: 201
There are a lot of incorrect answers here.
A plasma is an ionized quasineutral gas. There is some level of background ionization in basically all gasses, and as you heat any gas, a larger and larger portion of electrons leave their nuclei. In gas in the atmosphere the ionization fraction is so low that quasi neutrality does not occur, and thus we don’t call those gases a plasma.
People think that plasmas have to be hot, but there are ways to manipulate gases with electric fields such that the gas temperature is room temperature while the electrons are preferentially heated. This is used in the manufacture of computer chips commonly.
Flames are technically plasmas, but they have very low ionization rates (much less than 1%). If you place a candle flame in a very strong magnetic field you can bend the flame or even extinguish it.
Source: had a homework assignment on this topic in a plasma course in graduate school.
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