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.
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Ans: Plasma is a kind of matter, like solid, liquid or gas. But plasma is different because it has a lot of energy and is made of tiny pieces of atoms that have electric charges. This means that plasma can be affected by electric and magnetic fields. Plasma is very common in the universe, but not so much on Earth. Some examples of plasma are lightning, our very own Sun, and the Aurora Borealis.
Flame (the regular type we usually see) is not plasma, because it does not have enough energy to break apart the atoms completely. Flame is mostly a hot gas that glows because of chemical reactions. Sometimes, flame can have a little bit of plasma in it, like when you see sparks or blue flames. But most of the time, flame is not plasma.
plasma is when things become so hot, the electrons and atom body separate.
flames arent that hot (thank god)
flames are particles of whatever youre burning (usually carbon) that glow red from the heat.
hot air rises, so from the burning thing, hot air with very hot particles in it rises up. the particles cool as they rise, which gives flames their characteristic color spectrum (very hot blue (sometimes even white) to orange to red)
edit: but yes, you can appearently make plasma by microwaving flames? idk thats beyond my understanding of physics or chemistry though, sorry ^^
No, it’s just hot gas (of we’re talking about average fire, like the candle)
The light from a fire comes from two sources:
The red-orange flames are little bits of hot soot radiating heat away as light. They’re literally red-hot, like hot steel. As you can probably imagine, a glowing bar of steel isn’t plasma, since it’s still solid. Neither is soot.
Some other colours, like the blue of a stove, comes from electrons which are still attached to their atoms relaxing from one energy state to another. That’s why you get the nearly monochromatic light, it’s a very specific transition, and a dead giveaway that it’s not plasma. The electrons have to be still attached for that to be possible.
Actual plasma, like a star, emits a spectrum of light according to its temperature, kind of like the soot or steel but much hotter. It’s called the Black Body spectrum, because it reflects no light, and all light emitted is purely thermal.
Fire is a gas. The only reason it doesn’t “look” like a gas to the human eye is cause only part of it glows and as it cools it becomes invisible. Fire expands outwards and upwards as it cools and dissipates into the atmosphere, more or less the same way any other hot gas would.
In fact you could say that fire is specifically the hot and visibly incandescent portion of a gas cloud formed by the chemical reaction of fuel and heat and oxygen.
Note: really really hot fires can generate plasma, like thermite for example, but your average fire made with wood or gas or other common household fuels would generate little to no plasma.
As said, Flames are not plasma.
When a Space capsule returns fromt he ISS, the capsule is travelling so fast that the interaction with the atmosphere, the atoms of the atmosphere cannot move out of the way fast enough, causing friction, and HEAT. The Resulting reaction turns in to plasma.
Plasma is the 4th state of matter, Solid, Liquid, Gas and Plasma.
Plasma is ionized gas and flames do contain some of it. Putting a candle in an active capacitor shows this, as the flame will be pulled to the negatively charged side because the positive ions from the flame are pulled towards it.
Then, how it is used to easily cut steel? Or is that something else?
Hank Green did a video of this! https://youtu.be/dn5a0pQmJwE
Long story short, asking what state of matter fire is kind of moot. Like asking what state of matter a waterfall is.
The best eli5 is to compare solids and gases.
Have you seen metals being heated? The solid object starts glowing, right? Now imagine instead of a solid, you have a hot gas. Since it is also hot, it will glow. So burning a candle produces hot air which glows.
Don’t overthink it by bringing plasma into it. Plasma needs much more harsh conditions than this.
Flame is a complicated process. As wood heats up past it’s ignition point, it starts chemically breaking down into flammable gasses and soot/other impurities. Those flammable gasses reacting with oxygen are the flame…which is hot enough to heat more wood that breaks down. The more soot and impurities, generally the larger and brighter the flame.
This is why more pure flames like propane have smaller actual flames, and some fuels will even have invisible flames.
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