Well could we use water instead?
Right. Now we're going to try this. We've got a beaker of boiling water here
and I'm going to light some petrol and put this into the beaker.
Well before it even gets into the bottom of the flask,
I haven't even put it into the water yet, the steam has put it out.
So even the steam puts out the burning petrol.
What about burning magnesium?
So I need to light the the magnesium to get it going.
Going to get it going, get it burning.
Okay and lower it in to the steam and into the water
and look how vigorous the reaction is.
So even in water the magnesium, well it burns in water.
This is combining with the water. It's stealing the oxygen from the water,
forming again magnesium oxide and, well, giving out hydrogen.
So we can show this with a chemical equation.
We have magnesium reacting with water, the magnesium steals the oxygen forming magnesium oxide
and forms hydrogen gas. What else could we try to put out our burning magnesium?