• Question: What state of matter is fire?

    Asked by to Daren, Lynne, Phillip, Simon on 17 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      Fire is mainly just very hot gases. When you burn a fuel you release energy. If you give a molecule enough energy it forms something called an excited state (a bit like a small child running around at a party full on sugar). When the excited state returns to normal it emits light, which is how you see the flame.
      If you get a flame hot enough it can ionise the gases around it, making a plasma – the fourth state of matter.

    • Photo: Daren Fearon

      Daren Fearon answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      The four states of matter are gas, liquid, solid and plasma. Fire is best described as a mixture of hot gases. Although, apparently the ancient greeks actually thought it was an element of its own!

    • Photo: Phillip Manning

      Phillip Manning answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      Fire is a combination of the material burning and any fuel (oxygen, petrol, etc.) that is sometimes part of the said fire. The state of matter is gas, albeit with some particulates/solids being included in the flames discharge from the material on fire.

    • Photo: Lynne Thomas

      Lynne Thomas answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      I can’t explain this any better than the other scientists, but if you have different chemical elements in the fire, you can get different coloured flames!

    • Photo: Simon Redfern

      Simon Redfern answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      fire is the radiation (bright and hot light) that is emitted when gases undergo a chemical reaction. So the fire itself is not a state of matter, but it is a phenomenon associated with reacting gases.

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