Can fire burn or melt everything? (2024)

Fire is a chemical reaction that combines fuel and oxygen. The temperature of a fire can reach 1100 degrees Fahrenheit. Fire can't melt everything, but it can melt steel, which has a melting point of 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit.

There are few things as exciting as a campfire, or any fire for that matter. They are beautiful and deadly, unpredictable and mysterious. We fear them, create them, blunt them, and protect against them because there are few forces in the world that are so destructive. If the wind is right and the fuel is dry enough, thousands of hectares of forest can burn within hours or days.

Given how widespread and universal fire is, it raises a common question: Is there anything that fire can't burn or melt?

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Burning versus melting

Before we dive into the limitations of fire, let's briefly discuss the difference between burning and melting; Although fire can do both things, the processes involved are not the same.

When something is melted, such as an ice cube, it represents a phase change. In other words, ice changes from a solid state of water to a liquid state of water, but the chemical composition of the material itself does not change. Similarly, a chocolate bar that melts in your bag on a hot day changes from a solid to a liquid state, but the taste and basic composition do not change in any way, only the shape.

However, when something burns, it represents an oxidizing chemical reaction in which the material being burned is chemically changed into other substances with different properties. Wood is the most common example of this. Unlike ice cream or chocolate, wood cannot melt because its combustion temperature is lower than its melting point; a fire would occur before the material could change phase to "liquid" wood.

When you throw a log on the fire, the wood begins to heat up until it reaches an ignition point where the fuel – the hydrocarbons of the wood – can interact with oxygen in the air and ignite, i.e. begin to burn. This usually happens when the wood reaches a temperature of 500 degrees Fahrenheit, although the smoke is released at about 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Smoke consists of hydrogen, carbon and oxygen compounds, including carbon dioxide and other volatile gases. The material left in your fireplace or fire ring consists of charcoal and ash. Charcoal is essentially pure carbon and forms the basis of charcoal, while ash consists of the minerals in the wood that cannot be burned as gas.

While 'fire' itself is a chemical reaction, the visible flames you see are actually a state of matter known as plasma, where hot gases are constantly reacting and emitting light as they are still being ionized. The temperature of the released gases, and the fire itself, will normally peak at about 1100 degrees Fahrenheit, while the charcoal burning when all the volatile gases are released will burn at about twice that temperature: 2000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Also read:Is it possible to melt wood?

What can't fire affect?

Although 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit is incredibly hot and very dangerous, there are many substances with combustion points higher than that temperature. On average, most home fires burn between 1,000 and 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, so there are plenty of items in your home that wouldn't be consumed.

For example, your jewelry, which can be made of gold and silver, has a melting point of 1,950 degrees and 1,700 degrees respectively, while your diamonds are completely safe with a melting point of 6,000 degrees. Most gemstones have a similarly high melting point. Steel has a melting point of about 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit, so most of your tools and cookware would survive a normal house fire, as would most of the tools in your garage.

However, we only considered a normal fire that mainly burns carbonaceous fuels/objects with low combustion temperatures. It's difficult to create a fire that burns hotter than this, but far from impossible. If you pass a current of electricity through a gas, it will plasmize, similar to what happens in the colorful flames above a fire, but the temperatures of these gases can reach temperatures of about36,000 degrees Fahrenheit.Such intense levels of concentrated heat can be seen in the plasma arcletand other related areas. That temperature should be able to melt just about anything, but it won't necessarily cause everything to "burn."

The question of what things cannot "burn" is somewhat vague, since combustion reactions, that is, burning, are usually classified as reactions involving hydrocarbons and oxygen. Some materials have inherent structural or chemical barriers to combustion in the presence of oxygen, and some other materials have no hydrogen available to burn. That said, oxygen isn't the only gas that can result in an exothermic reaction. Research has shown that fluorine, nitrogen and carbon dioxide can all support combustion reactions of less common materials when conditions are right.

If you try to find something that willneverfirewood, the noble gases are an excellent example of this. They are 'satisfied' with their current structures and are perfectly content to be non-reactive, especially when it comes to combustion. They can react when stressed under extreme conditions, but would never actually "burn up" by the standard definition.

A final word

Fire should always be taken seriously because it has such destructive potential, but it's good to know the limitations of these reactions, as well as the basic components of creating one. Despite its inherent dangers, people are still fascinated by fire and drawn to pushing its boundaries. A few years ago, scientists created the most refractory material in history, or at least the material with the highest melting point. A special combination of carbon, nitrogen and hafnium has a melting point of 7460 degrees Fahrenheit.

Also read:3 fires around the world that always burn