Pretty much the title. For example, When being burned wood burns to charcoal but things like metal melt and turn into a liquid?
In: Chemistry
First of all it’s worth noting that the way things react to heat here on Earth is heavily controlled by the air around us. The air does a lot of things. First, it squeezes things together, which is called atmospheric pressure. In the vacuum of space, most things can’t become liquid because without the air squeezing it together the atoms don’t stay around each other in that “liquidy” sort of way. Another thing the air does is provide oxygen. Nothing burns without oxygen. If you heat a piece of wood in space, it will never burn no matter what you do.
If we’re talking about things on Earth though, the answer is basically that all solids have one temperature at which they’ll stop being solid, and if it can interact with oxygen it will have another temperature for that. The question then becomes which one is lower. Wood burns at a *much* lower temperature than it would take to make the entire log something other than a solid. On the other hand, metal, which is far more stable on its own and less likely to interact with oxygen, will turn into a liquid first (metal can still burn but it’s very slow and takes more oxygen than the air can usually give it).
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