1

Every thing is matter So In which state of matter fire will be considered? I haven't get it's proper answer.

Ayesha
  • 23
  • 1
    Hi Ayesha, see the question I've linked. Fire isn't a state of matter, it is a gas phase reaction. – John Rennie Jul 03 '16 at 16:45
  • John Rennie .ok Fire is a gas phase then why we say every thing is made of matter.if fire is a gas phase then there must be many other things that don't belong to any state of matter then why we say that everything is matter.I'm confused.:/ – Ayesha Jul 03 '16 at 17:07
  • Hi Ayesha. I don't understand what you're asking. Fire is a gas phase reaction that emits light. I don't understand how you start from this and conclude that there must be many other things that don't belong to any state of matter. – John Rennie Jul 03 '16 at 17:10
  • John Rennie, as you said that it's not a state of matter so i asked if it's not any state of matter then what is it in actual.Similarly if it's not any state of matter there can be possibilities of other things .Well i got it's answer.Thanks a bunch. – Ayesha Jul 03 '16 at 17:14
  • Ah I understand. I meant it's just a gas so it's not a new or different state of matter. – John Rennie Jul 03 '16 at 17:15
  • @Ayesha moreover, "matter" is a word that has very much passed its scientific "use-by"date. See the Wikipedia "matter"article that discusses the word's ambiguity. Some specialized branches of science still use the word "matter" in specialized ways (e.g. some general relativity theorists mean the $T_{0,0}$ source term in the Einstein Field equations, "Condensed matter" specialists mean (interesting) low temperature states of atomic systems, a medical doctor means invasive foreign or necrotic substance in a wound and so forth) , but you must check the definition being used carefully. – Selene Routley Jul 04 '16 at 04:32

4 Answers4

1

Fire is just a very energetic gas.

It is made out of molecules (the products of the reaction and atmospheric gasses) moving very fast

user122066
  • 1,165
  • 7
  • 14
1

Fire, chemical fire in particular, the kind we see everyday on candles and under saucepans, is actually just super-heated air. The atoms/molecules are so agitated that electronic transitions make it visible to us along with radiating heat which we feel.

There is a different kind of 'fire' though, which we find on stars or inside tokomaks and stellarators, this kind is fundamentally different in constitution from our ordinary household fire. In fact, in these 'fire's, atoms don't exist, the electrons have been ripped off and it exists as kind of a goo made up of electrons and individual nuclei, plasma that is. These can be incredibly hot, much much more than ordinary fire.

The 'state' of matter isn't of particular concern in science. My brother once asked, with a pensive look on his face, what state of matter would steaming, gooey rice be? I mean it flows. almost like a fluid under a noticeable tangential shear, yet occupies a fixed shape even when it isn't in a container.

Like all systems of classification, this division of matter into 'solids', 'liquids', 'gases'. 'plasma'or 'BEC' is taken too seriously by beginners in science.

Ice and liquid water are different states with the same chemical composition, hence they can be said to be more 'similar' in a sense than ice and calcite(at room temperature), both of which are solids.

This classification is based on similarities of mechanical properties. There are a whole range of materials that have intermediary properties and can't be strictly said to fall into either of the above categories. It just doesn't matter. These states are man-made simplifications to make sense of the incredibly varied and rich universe we live in, like a crutch, a rule of thumb.

0

Fire is actually a region where a combustion reaction takes place. If we talk about the various states present in this region, it could be gases which are a result of combustion, and very high temperature flames can even cause gas to change to plasma. The coloured object which we call fire actually is light energy being released which can't be classified into states of matter.

user456
  • 565
  • 1
    Also, the red-orange-yellow glow of a flame comes from the radiation of heated soot particles suspended in the air (blackbody radiation). So the "fire you can see" is also glowing smoke. – DK2AX Jul 03 '16 at 17:35
-1

Fire itself isn't really a thing. And by thing I mean a construct of atoms. It's easy to rely too heavily on the concept that absolutly everything is a construct of atoms, but fire (although created by chemical reactions) is just simply an image. Similar to a rainbow and the northern lights, fire itself is just a bunch of excited energetic atoms emitting light. So if you were to define the atoms that emit the light as the fire itself, then it would be a gas.