• Question: what makes the hottest fire please?

    Asked by anon-259822 on 30 Sep 2020.
    • Photo: James Smallcombe

      James Smallcombe answered on 30 Sep 2020:

      Apparently (I am not a chemistry expert) Dicyanoacetylene which is a molecule with the formula C4N2 is the hottest chemical flame at about 5000 degrees C.

      But beyond chemical flames, some of the hottest reactions on the planet are the experiments in nuclear fusion run at places like JET at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Oxfordshire, where they fuse deuterium and tritium (heavy hydrogen isotopes) making a plasma reaching temperatures as high as 100 million degrees.

    • Photo: Holly Campbell

      Holly Campbell answered on 1 Oct 2020:

      Adding to James’s answer, thermite is something you might want to search videos of! It’s not as hot, but it’s a lot of fun!
      Thermite is a powdered mixture of a metal and a metal oxide (commonly aluminium and iron(III) oxide). By lighting a sparkler (such as a magnesium ribbon), aluminium and the iron in the iron(III) oxide swap electrons, resulting in the aluminium taking away the oxygen to become aluminium oxide (and the iron is left as pure iron). Chemical reactions which involve the exchange of electrons are often highly exothermic, releasing a lot of heat. Thermite in particular also releases a lot of light because the mixture gets so hot (on the order of a few thousand degrees Celsius), which means that after ignition, it looks a lot like a mini firework with white hot powder bursting outwards!

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