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water is really useful when it comes to
putting out fires it's why I always have
a bucket of water in my studio when I'm
doing stuff in fire but why is that
well it's the fire triangle so for a
fire you need heat fuel and oxygen and
when you douse a flame with water you're
removing the heat component of the fire
triangle why is water good at that well
water has a high heat capacity that
means that you can pump loads of thermal
energy into it and the temperature of
the water will only rise a little bit
it's why electric kettles use so much
power and what is a pretty good thermal
conductor as well so it's good at
sucking the thermal energy from its
surroundings without getting hot so it
might seem surprising then that you
could light a match with water but of
course if you got the water so hot that
it was hotter than a flame well it
wouldn't be able to suck thermal energy
from the flame because the thermal
gradient would be in the wrong direction
right it's because thermal energy flows
from hot things to cold things so it
turns out that you need to get the water
incredibly hot like hotter than the
boiling point way hotter than the
boiling point so it's superheated steam
you can make superheated steam by first
of all making normal steam so just boil
the water and then direct the steam
through a coil and then heat the coil
what comes out the other end is
superheated steam if you can get a hot
enough
you can set light to a match
I first saw this demonstration done by
far in Azir years ago actually she does
great stuff with science outreach she's
currently in the Public Engagement
department at the Wellcome Trust but you
can check out what she's doing online
something I noticed that's interesting
is that the copper coil turns black when
you turn the flame on the black stuff is
actually copper oxide so the copper has
reacted with oxygen in the air and that
reaction is sped up by the high
temperatures it's interesting cuz I
thought copper oxide was green like
that's why the Statue of Liberty is
green the copper has reacted with the
oxygen in the air but actually the green
stuff is a later stage so you get
oxidation first and then you get a
reaction with the carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere and the sulfur as well the
reaction with the chrome dioxide leads
to a mineral called malachite and
malachite is green that's where the
Statue of Liberty is green but the
copper oxide on its own is the black
stuff this video is sponsored by
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