What State of Matter is Fire
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- Опубліковано 7 лют 2025
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This question has been bugging me for about 20 years. And, ultimately, it still bugs me...
**Other UA-cam videos about this**
This "It's OK to be Smart" is my favorite: • What Is Fire?
This Minute Physics one is SO SHORT and says SO MUCH!: • What is fire?
Veritasium has a video saying that fire is plasma (I don't think it is, but it does clearly contain lots of ions because, like, it's a bunch of intermediate reaction species that don't really have any set state of matter but are ionic): • What's In A Candle Flame?
And then this TedEd video gets into the "not matter, but a process" argument: • Is fire a solid, a liq...
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Idk if I will ever be more qualified to weigh in on a vlogbrothers video. I work at NASA as a multiphase fluid dynamicist on combustion fluid dynamics. And this kind of pedantry is exactly the kind of thing my coworkers and I love to chat about while we are waiting for meetings to start. I actually think I agree with most of what you said, and I like the "process" description. But in the spirit of lighthearted pedantry, I think there is a more satisfying and informative answer out there beyond "it's not a state of matter", or even "it's a process". That description is that waterfalls and fire are _emergent phenomena_ . Basically, the _process_ is "combustion", the _emergent phenomenon_ is "fire". Similarly, the _process_ is "a cascade of multiphase droplet breakup due to surface tension and significant differences in density in a gravitational field", the _emergent phenomenon_ is "a waterfall". Also, while both waterfalls and fire are made of constituents, a useful description of them requires understanding their combined emergent behavior, not their constituent behavior nor their root cause processes. I think through this question, both waterfalls and fire serve as a familiar and instructive introduction to the idea of emergence, which is imo a critically important and really interesting concept in science.
I also think this kind of description holds up in practice. In the analysis and simulations I do for my job, we talk about multiphase fluids and combusting or reacting fluids as a shorthand to indicate we are dealing with complex coupled systems and to illicit the weariness and intuition to recognize the physics we're talking about are going to have strange, counterintuitive emergent behaviors which may be grossly dissimilar from the expected behaviors of their constituents. Just as a fun aside (and maybe this could be a a tiktok or scishow or something), "Wood's Equation" is a great example of this. That equation describes how sound (i.e. pressure waves) travelling through a bubbly liquid or droplety gas will go 2 orders of magnitude slower than it otherwise would in the gas or liquid alone. Meaning the speed of sound through a multiphase fluid can be jogging speed. And the most bizarre thing is that this behavior (and lots of other emergent multiphase behaviors) kick in with almost no multiphase content. That 2 order of magnitude drop can happen for a liquid with only 0.1% bubbles by volume. That is a basically imperceptible amount of bubbles causing a gargantuan change to a fundamental intrinsic property of a fluid. It is absolutely wild, and implies that pure singlephase fluids (e.g. liquids, gases) are bizarre outliers and the real "normal" for fluids might be multiphase behavior.
Anyways, while I think the description as a "process" is better than "not a state of matter", I think it might miss an opportunity to get into emergence which is definitely the most interesting lesson from this question, and is a concept that as many people as possible should develop intuition for and learn about.
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This is so interesting and a way of thinking about it that makes complete sense to me! Also, I’m so jealous of your job. I hope it’s incredible!
god I love science. thank you for this amazing ELI5. Def gonna read up on emergence
This is such a cool explanation and it makes so much sense! Thanks for sharing
This is a great addition to the video, and I now love the concept of emergent phenomena and it’s relationship to processes and states of matter!
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“Fire is not a state of being; it’s a process.”
That sounds like a philosophical quote from thousands of years ago
In 1665 Robert Hooke declared that "fire is not an element".
Or like state of process. Animated and inanimate state, an animated state being animal.
A wood in process of continuing being wood. In process of rotting. In the state of roth.
Fast process cuz reaction, while stone is stone. Stone is not that reactive.
So, fire is reaction. Not new, same thing, differennt angle.
sll science is based on philosophical linguistic categories
That is a perfectly correct statement. Just because we have given something a name and called it a state of matter it doesn't have to be a logical extrapolation of solid/liquid/gas it IS a process and it IS hot and it IS ionic - unlike the other 3.
But then Bose-Einstein condensate is the same in that it is a phenomena of matter under certain conditions, like fire.
But if hot enough, like over 10,000°C degrees, then fire becomes plasma.
The real state of matter was the friends we made along the way.
Oh you
This made me laugh
@@OnlySlightyRadioactive Sitcom music ensues.
Int hen end isn't that all that really... matters? ;)
😶😂🤣
I vividly remember asking "what even is fire" back in high school and getting laughed at in my chemistry class.
I also vividly remember my teacher avoiding the question.
isn't it simply the self sustaining exothermic reaction of combining gaseous ions at high temperature.
I vividly remember being too afraid to ask my chemistry teacher
@@luckysongara5351
I vividly remember being too afraid to ask my chemistry crush avoiding me to date...
@@luckysongara5351
I vividly remember being too afraid to ask my chemistry crush avoiding the date...
As a chemist I might add that states of matter are a property of *bulk matter* not individual particles.
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How many moles do you need to call something bulk matter?
@@tao5231 depends on the substance - I don't think there's a formal definition though. If I had to give an answer, I'd say;
For a crystalline solid, enough that the structure can be accurately deduced from x-ray diffraction data
For a liquid, enough that the radial distribution function of particles at the longest range present is very close to 1, or for a mixture of liquids the concentration of each component is close to constant across the droplet (there will always be a change of concentration at the edges of a droplet as one component will interact less favourable with itself and the other component(s)
Gases aren't really bulk matter anyway, so we can ignore them. I would hazard a guess that these properties would emerge with numbers of atoms or molecules between the order of 10^2 and 10^4, but that's simply from intuition.
@@DiamondLogiX So is a single molecule a gas then?
@@cubeofcheese5574 Umm... single molecule is not bulk batter, so no label to that one.
As a student, my teachers disliked when I would ask this question in front of the class. Only a few of them made the attempt to offer an explanation, and none produced something as concise and digestible as this. Thanks so much for making this video, it has earned you another subscriber.
Literally had this discussion with my kids THREE DAYS ago and had no freaking idea what to tell them. Now I do. Thanks!
🚨🚨🚨 AAAAAAHHHHH!!! 🚨🚨🚨 school is sooooo boring i am in 8th grate and its so boring i am having sucess on youtube so i think i will drop out of school. i dont have friends so i need your opinon gar
@@AxxLAfriku Everyone gets what he deserves, I guess.
"Okay so like there are the candle particles and they get hot and... Let me back up, think about a waterfall, right, like a waterfall isn't matter because it's in process right, so like the same way butt is legs waterfall is... process..."
Literally? You literally had a discussion?
Literally?
I don't think his "not a state of matter" is correct at all. The part of fire that we see, and therefore call fire is indeed the visual cue that ions are being exchanged and that makes it plasma. Ions can exchange without a visual cue, but we never call that fire. Just like you can have plasma that don't have visual cues.
As a young child, I thought about this question and decided to become the person to answer "what is fire." years later, I understand that we have an answer, it's just not simple enough to satisfy my 8-year-old self. but as I finish up my PhD in chemistry, I'm glad I was curious enough to ponder the question in my youth.
Cool to know the (one among many, I’m sure) place where your scientific/ chemistry curiosity began. Good luck finishing up your PhD!!
I applaud the enterprise of course but it also means you failed in your quest. 😬
Are we not going to talk about how cool that match-lighting was?!
Was looking for this comment!
it was so cool!
I watched that like 3 times!
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Convinced Hank only made this video as an excuse to show that off!
the waterfall metaphor is incredibly useful for this explanation, I don't think it would've clicked for me if not for thag
The fact that fire is a process not a matter seems so obvious and yet I have wondered for so many years, thank you!
I literally saw the title of the video and had that realization all of a sudden. I still watched the video, of course, and I'm glad to know hank and I share the same view on this. But I was thought in school it was in plasma state and I never questioned it until today
But. But. That’s what I always thought. But then he said most of it is matter. It’s glowing particles of soot. So . . .
Yeah, like, we all learn in science class about the process of combustion, but then I never really made the connection that THAT'S WHAT FIRE IS. That is fire. It's not the thing being burnt; it's the process.
*actually,* there's no such place as Niagara Falls, because it's not a place, it's an event that happens *at* a place. Nnnyeeeeah. 🧐
I was taught that fire was a plasma! I have been wrong for many years now !
The vlogbrothers condensed:
Hank: What is Matter?
John: What matters?
I love the waterfall analogy. This also reminds me how people on TikTok can't seem to accept that the candle wax is burning.
.... Where else would it go?
The waterfall is the candle in that analogy i guess
@@spike315
"Clearly, it doesn't go anywhere, because it takes forever for a candle to burn up"
/s
so basically wax is made out of carbon and hydrogen. and when it's burned it releases the carbon as soot. both the candle wax and wick are burning. the candle would be put out if not for the wax preventing the wick from getting burned away. how does it do this? by melting and flowing up the wick to where it gets burned away in place of the wick.
why does the wick always say at the same length for the most part? it doesn't you'll have to trim it when it gets too long or it causes issue but when it does shrink it's because it's been burned away before the wax can melt.
and sure you do not need a wick for a candle you just need a blow torch to melt the wax and then set it on fire it's not very easy.
it's not complicated.
@@spike315 Old drippy candles looked like the wax melted so it was possible to think it just liquefied and flowed down to the end
"Fire does not have a state of matter because fire is not matter; fire is a process." I feel like that could be a metaphor for a lot of beautiful things. Human growth, mental health, becoming a better person, the expectations placed on us when in reality we don't conform to those societal norms... I don't know. But it was strangely beautiful, how you said it. And now I want John to make a follow-up video talking about the state of matter of fire as a metaphor.
Videos like this are what made me fall in love with Nerdfighteria. The unironic enthusiasm of learning something complex. That is what you and John built here, and I love it.
You put it into words! Awesome!
Yes!
I asked my chemistry teacher this question in the 10th grade and was unsatisfied with his answer (he said plasma), but over the many years since I came to the conclusion that the problem is that language treats fire as a noun when it's really more of a verb, coz it's a reaction, an event - like you said, a process. I'm glad you came to the same (or a similar) conclusion, gives me faith in my brain.
So what you're saying is instead of "this is a fire", you would rather say "it's firing"?
@@trumpetwizard7250 I had the same issue. Whether or not fire is a process or a static thing doesn’t matter, it’s a noun either way. But you get what he meant, you shouldn’t be pedantic about it. Grice’s razor, I think.
Oh boy my PhD in combustion is useful for once, and everything you said here is spot on. But in practice, the math we usually use to describe fire is a gas-model. But yeah, some of the intermediate chemistry can be ionized (plasmas) and a lot of research cares about soot (solids). Turns out fire is ridiculously complicated lol
Once you learn a PhD in combustion is possible, it seems likely the answer can't be one word.
Shoutout to this comment from someone who used to work in fire probabilistic risk assessment 🔥
He’s a certified pyromaniac, guys.
It seems to me that the second half of your comment proves that Hank's conception is misleading, since at all times some part of the flame can be described as some form of matter. Whether that state is at equilibrium is irrelevant because over infinite time no system is at equilibrium and it is only our time reference frame that determines that a flame is more impermanent than a solid.
Doctor Fire over here!
Most amazing 4 minutes I've ever watched! Pure knowledge.
Knowledge is a process and not a state of understanding.
I had to check in the middle of the video that I hadn't been sitting watching for twice as long the video was SO dense with information!
Fire is a nation that wishes to bring its economic and technical advancements to the rest of the world. I think next time Sozin’s comet comes around they may have a real shot at it.
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Fire nation propaganda 😂😂😂😂
Ozai did nothing wrong
If only the firebenders learned a bit more of this secret knowledge they might be able to control some other emergent phenomenons
Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked.
I like Sean Carrols tongue in cheek answer to every question. "The laws of physics and the intitial conditions of the universe". Its not all that helpful, but it is a correct answer to everything😂
2:13 That matchbook flip was so smooth! (How many takes did that need? It just seemed so natural and confident!)
I saw that and I was like “hold on, run that back” and replayed that moment a few times haha
This was a famous thing on tiktok a while back where a lot of people (definitely not also me) were thirsting over his ability to do that and I honestly cant believe he decided to do it again. I am in shock
I'd like to see what's behind the edit there lol
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yessssss science daddy did the sexy match thing 🥵
This is the exact question I asked my physics teacher back in high school. Got laughed at, so I never went looking for an answer. Thank you Hank, wish you’d been my physics teacher all those years ago. 🙃
It is depressing how many American comments to this video included 'and was laughed at by my teacher'. That would simply be considered impolite, unhelpful and borderline unprofessional in British schools (at least in the distant past when I was a pupil)
I just wanted to say that during my chemistry degree we did look at the states between molecules during a reaction as defined by Transition state theory. The question of states of matter question is interesting since I think there are a few that can be stabilised long enough to form a large enough mass.
However this unveils a more complex question as in "What state of matter is salt _when dissolved in water?_ "
Huh. Wouldn't it sort of be a plasma? Weird.
Ya'll are way smarter than me in this subject, so feel free to educate me. But wouldn't it be liquid? My reasoning being that I saw another comment saying States of Matter is meant to define matter in bulk, so the salt being dissolved in a solution, wouldn't you need to look at the solution as a whole?
@@ZephWraen if you were to try and make salt a liquid by itself without water, you'd have to heat it up to 801 degrees C. Which is obviously very different from dissolving salt in room temperature water.
I do think your argument about looking at things as a whole is valid. I'm just trying to add something more to the conversation
I really like the salt in water question, but unfortunately I think it is simple. It is isnt salt in water. It is one solution, Salt Water, and that solution is a liquid. Which you can freeze salt water etc. Specifically looking at the salt molecules in a solution (or any specific component of a solution) and asking what state of matter it is, just doesnt make sense as a valid question to me.
And by valid I mean the question doesnt have an understanding of the actual situation. This same kind of thing comes in quantum mechanics and high level maths. It SEEMS way more confusing and abstract because ask questions that dont actually make sense, so people give weird answers, because that is the only kind of answer they can give.
@@cubeofcheese5574 It’s a mixture between a liquid and a solid so I’m not sure you can say the salt is itself liquid. It’s certainly not solid as the crystal structure is gone and it moves as a fluid with the water It’s a dissolved solid. As you said, liquid salt is entirely different.
The way you lit that match was fire 🔥
I went into this video ready to be frustrated, because I read the title and was like "that's a silly question. It's a process. That's like asking what state of matter is boil." I was very happy with what I found. Thank you!
It depends on whether "fire" refers to combustion or a flame. Combustion is a process, a flame is a physical space filled with matter.
This is one of the most gangster science videos I've ever seen. The way you lit that match amazing and nearly as awesome as your answering of a question I forgot I had from over a decade ago!
Can we talk about how out of nowhere hank lit a match in the most stylish way ever?
I rewound like 3 times because my brain said "That's sexy." And I was like am I attracted to Hank right now
But how, i want to try :(
YES!! I had to rewind because I kept just thinking “what did I just watch?”
honestly until i saw this comment i thought he had used a lighter!
wow vlogbrothers Hank green just made it simpler so kids can understand A+ for being the best science teacher to Hank green
I love watching Hank discuss the scientific process and how his brain works. I always learn so much
*watching the match-lighting trick over and over, fascinated*
I asked this in science class in highschool and everyone went silent and I thought I had asked a really stupid question and the teacher was just trying to make me feel better when they said it was a good question. Nice to know it was actually a decent question and I wasn't really saying something silly. Gives me a little bit more faith in myself. Thanks Hank!
Most "stupid" questions come from ignorance. If you dont know that reactions "arent matter" then the question makes a ton of sense, and in school I think matter is defined pretty poorly. Usually got something along the lines of "Matter makes up everything" or "Matter is everything", so assuming fire is matter makes sense,etc etc/
@@benperez4788 You're probably right about that. I was too childish to realize that people don't think about you as much as your anxious paranoia insists; that the vast majority of the time you think people are thinking about you, they're not, or they were and have already moved on.
That flame flick was sick.
I like the waterfall analogy but it still misses that the highly ionized bit of the fire is actually plasma. Just because a reaction is going on, doesn't mean the state of mater changes. If two things are reacting in solution, they don't suddenly change the liquid in the beaker to a new state called "reactionium" or something. Fire contains some solids, some very hot gases, but also, some gases which are completely ionized and by definition plasma. Plasmas are HIGHLY reactive and it's well established that tons of chemical reactions occur within them. There is literally whole industries that make use of this fact and use plasma to process all kinds of stuff. So you can absolutely point to the blue bit and call it plasma, and the orange bit and call it hot gas with glowing solids. But there are distinct zones in states which are much easier to pinpoint what they are. But the boundaries between those it does get messy and the waterfall analogy holds. Same way that at the triple point of water, water can exist sort've in all the states at once. And yet, that state is given it's own name because it's not really any of the others. Which also brings up the whole "there aren't just 4 states of matter, there's at least 20".... thing. But I digress.
This is a great comment and I appreciate how it explains a little bit more of the nuance involved than the video describes.
But why I'm replying - and I'm not trying to diminish your comment at all! - is that I just wanted to share that I am really amused that you wrote "sort of" as "sort've."
I've seen this the other way with "could've" and "should've" turning erroneously into "could of" and "should of," respectively, but I've never seen the pronunciation of "sort of" get written as the incorrect contraction "sort've," which would mean "sort have."
I've to say though... Novel errors of this sort've sort of a soft spot in my heart.
Hank has a point about the molecules that are undergoing the combustion reaction. States of matter refer to the bulk properties of matter, and the molecules in a transition state of a chemical reaction aren't really part of a bulk anymore.
Categorizing everything into states misses the nuance of everything. Reminds me of politics, everything is "liberal", "conservative", "socialist", "libertarian" and these concepts are treated as states when they are really just clouds of idea, the context-dependency detracts from precise conversation.
The blue part definitely isn't plasma, right? My understanding is that the photons aren't created by ionization, they're created by electrons being excited to higher energy states and then dropping back down. The electrons have to be part of an atom to do that. But yea, there is definitely ionized gas in a flame...the question of whether an atom of ionized gas counts as plasma even if it's going to react into something far more stable within the next few nanoseconds or whether that's just kinda...eh, we probably shouldn't say something has a state of matter unless it's at some level equilibrium, I think is good fodder for a good fun argument in which everyone is actually correct. It's "is a hotdog a sandwich" to me!
@@vlogbrothers The way I understand it, the difference between a glowing solid/liquid/gas and plasma is that the electrons are ripped off entirely. As far as I know they still eventually fall back down and emit light but the plasma I know just refers to a certain volume where the vast majority of particles are ionized.
Edit: So basically, I think the blue part counts as a plasma because it's mostly ionized particles.
Edit 2: I guess if you only look at the particles that actually emit the blue light those are the only ones within the plasma that aren't ionized and therefore aren't part of the plasma..
I should probably put here aswell that I'm not a physicist, just someone second guessing himself at 1am in the morning
This video is my absolute favorite thing Hank Green has ever done.
It has made it so easy to explain fire to my family and friends.
Before this video existed I would try to explain how it's not a state of matter, that it's many different matter particles in various states undergoing rapid change. When it became clear even that oversimplification wasn't enough I'd give up and just say, "You know plasma? Yeah it's just like that but with things that aren't gas, only not really at all"
It is a matter of concern, usually...
I hope when people Google this question they get this video, cause it's a damn good explanation of what fire is and why it's hard to define in terms of states of matter. Great video Hank
I love how Hank discusses a hard to answer question with a question he gets too much (where does the wax go when a candle burns?).
its so good, and a good "if you know you know" moments
This was educational and could've been 4+ mins but if it fits it fits
This is a question I have been wondering about over half my life. Thank you.
ME TOO TYLER!
@@vlogbrothers very long video to miss the real answer: the state of matter of fire is hot
This is one of the most intuitive sciencey explaining videos I have seen, and it’s under 4 minutes no less!
THANK YOU!!
Decades ago, when I was a biochemistry student, I took a trip with a bunch of visiting physics students to FermiLab. On the way there, I asked them if they knew what fire was. I figured it was just a known physics thing.
One guy, who for some reason felt threatened by me asking, condescendingly said "Phht, it's an energetic reaction". When I said "Yeah, so is water when it turns to steam, but what *is it*?", he got all huffy and scoffed "Well, it's plasma".
Thank you for finally answering that question for me, without the ego of a junior year physics student who hated that he didn't really know the answer either. 😂
PS. There was a wonderful girl on the trip, the only one in this group of students, who backed me up and said "Well, it seems more than that. The answer is...huh...I don't really know". I hope she's gone on to have an illustrious career, since she was way more interested in the questions than having all the answers.
". . . more interested in the questions than having all the answers."
This does make someone a good researcher, scientist, scholar, etc. Being more interested in the questions usually seems to yield more answers, but being more interested in the answers (at least from my experience) doesn't tend to lead to more questions.
Love it when questions that have bugged me for years (but just barely not enough for me to go find out) are finally answered. Hank, your endless effort to turn your own insatiable curiosity into teachable moments is a genuinely good thing :)
I remember asking my father what fire was some 45 years ago. "energy", he responded. So I surmised reactions.
Yeah I like that. A more proper answer would be the release of energy, but just calling it straight up energy makes sense. Like what is electricity? You can see when you get zapped, what state of matter is that? It is BASICALLY just energy.
@@alanhersch4617 … and soot particles from your burnt dermis…
AP chem student and I'd been wondering this for awhile, it makes a lot more sense now that the visual of fire is coming from excited electrons in gasses, as well as the soot particles glowing red-hot, like how we think of steel in a blacksmith's forge going from red to white to blue hot. Thanks!
"John, I'll see you on Wednesday"
After so many years of doing the same thing, it's still possible to make mistakes
That's first week of pizzamas special outro.
well this will be a fun thing to float around my head for the next few days. thanks Hank!
Ya know, I have a degree in Chemistry and a degree in Fluid Mechanics, and I've never thought about fire like that. Well done presentation and ideas!
Who had Hank heating a spoon over an open flame on their 2021 bingo card?
Are we just going to glance over the face that hank just lit a match with it still attached to the pack with one hand with no effort? I have never seen that technique before and I need to know it now.
That was SUCH a good vlogbrothers video! Great journey you took us on, loved it
That match trick Hank did was almost as cool as flipping a Tic Tac into his mouth
I wish there was a how to video
Hank, this is a masterful explanation for what fire is. Well done!
Turns out there are actually tons of "it's complicated" phases of matter. Even within a liquid (which has changing shape but not volume) can meet or fail to meet several other properties, such as: how are its molecules aligned? Are they random (e.g. molecules are oriented in different directions), or are they ordered (e.g. the molecules are all lined up with one another)? With this, and a few related properties, we can define liquid crystals, like the LCD screen in your phone! Also, turns out there are a bunch of sub-sub-types of liquid crystal phases of matter, depending on other properties of the molecular structure like chirality (sometimes called "handedness") or its sensitivity to temperature.
One of my favorites is how we have just recently realized how ice becomes so slippery on the surface. It is _not_ like we had assumed that the pressure on the surface melts the ice into a layer of water.
But rather, the molecules on the surface boundary are only loosely bonded because they don't have the full complement of atoms above them to stabilize their crystal structure. This allows them to be pushed into new arrangements while still being partially bonded to molecules below them, and then the bonds jump to attach to neighboring molecules.
@@HermanVonPetri
Wait, but that would mean that, with below-freezing robot arms, you could knead ice without it breaking or thawing...?
Surely that can't be right?!? O_o
@C,
Sorry, but alignment-vs-orderedness, chirality, and temperature sensitivity are _not_ related to the phase of matter, right?
They're properties of the material, sure.
But they're all liquids, because they all change shape without changing volume.
So it may be a sub-sub-type of liquid-crystals, but it's not a sub-type of being-liquid....
Like being a child/parent is separate from being a sister/brother; you can be either, both, or neither - but both typologies are neither part of (nor determinants for) the other.
If that makes sense?
And if I'm dearly mistaken, please do explain :)
@@MrNicoJac it's the fact that those different properties can give the materials functions that we would typically attribute to other states of matter so it just complicates the process of labeling.
Ultimately they're all just terms we made up to try and grasp the world.
Ice is a big one too. The explanation of why ice is slippery, would seem to imply that the surface of ice isnt a solid.
I like how you answered the candle question again too… just as a little treat.
I found this strangely fascinating (I'm not very good academically usually). I love how this taught me how to question things and look for the simpler answers in some cases.
"Wonderful bizzare thing" sounds like the title of hank's next book
I really did recently have an epiphany about this. I was like "what the heck is the glowy bit of fire if not its own thing???" and then I found SOMETHING that helped be realize that the glowy bit of a fire is NOT its own thing. "Yknow how metal glows when it gets really really hot? That's the fire. It's the smoke being so hot near the bit where the burning is happening that it glows. When it gets further away and cools down it is no longer glowing and is just smoke." And of course smoke is just soot particles floating in the air, etc etc...
Great insight. I am gonna use this explanation.
i appreciate how hank dedicated this video to answering one kind of question he didn't like while also managing to answer the eternal question of wax burning that he doesn't like
We just gonna skip by how Hank lit a match like my one armed grandpa?
Hank your informative content consistently lights my brain on fire.
I learned a lot until 2:13 and then I did not hear anything after that because I was just thinking about how to light a match with one hand haha that was fantastic
No one is gonna acknowledge that match trick?? 🔥🔥🔥
I asked this to my science teacher in 8th grade. She was wrong, but it did keep me interested enough to study physics and chemistry in college.
So UA-cam literally bullied me into watching this vid for 2 weeks it was number 1 on recommend and I swear I scrolled by it like 1000 times but now here I am. Thanks for listening to my story about the algorithm
okay not gonna lie im just replaying your matchbook trick my mind is empty I've completely forgotten the first two minutes of information
Yea hi how?
I love the waterfall analogy. I was confused by your Twitter poll cause it had never occurred to me to *try* and classify fire as a state of matter. And then I was like...am I an idiot? Is this something I should have known? Glad for the clarifying follow up video 🙂
I'd like to share my expertise with the group as well.
I've been a dragon for about 17 years now and my experience with fire in that time makes me fully agree with what you've said.
when i saw this video title i was like "four years into a chem degree, i should know" and i tried to think it through and i was like "....i dunno its combustion"
glad to find that the actual answer
No one is talking about how Hank just lit a match with one hand
came here to say that. Srsly impressive but I’m sure he’d be all “What? That’s nothin’ “
Same here, but I started to get a little worried when he started cooking the spoon...
"Don't chase the dragon, Hank! That high ain't worth the heartbreak!"
Youre amazing at what you do. You can tell youre passionate about the sciences, and that helps grab the listeners attention. I hope to continue to see videos from you for a while.
When you have to make an entire video because people won’t stop asking you where the wax goes
Is NO ONE going to point out how HE LIT THAT MATCH SO SMOOTHLY WITH ONE HAND?
I think you should differentiate between fire (the process/reaction) and a flame (which I think Veritasium correctly identifies as a plasma). A gas that is sufficiently ionized to respond to electromagnetic fields and exhibits collective behavior is definitionally a plasma. A plasma can contain ions of many different species (a multi-species plasma) as well as partially ionized or neutral atoms or molecules. For this reason plasma isn’t strictly a 'state of matter' because there isn't a discrete phase transition (instead, gas smoothly transitions from neutral to ionized along Paschen's curve). “Dusty” plasmas are a good example of another very different type of matter that still behaves like a plasma.
I'm not sure if any discussion of plasma is sufficient to explain flames, though. Many of the flames we encounter (particularly the more "traditional" orange ones) are mostly the result of un-combusted solids heated to the point that they glow.
Huh, yeah, that makes sense. I always would have assumed fire is a plasma, and it makes more sense when you describe it by distinguishing the flame and the fire.
I was thinking that too at first, but most of what people think of as "the flame" is just hot soot that is glowing because of blackbody radiation. And that isn't the highly ionized part of the flame. So you Kind of have to fall back to the waterfall analogy even then.
As an analytical chemist, I've thought about this question before, but wow! That waterfall analogy is so elegant that I am blown away. Excellent explanation! Bravo!
The real question is: HOW did Hank light that match with one hand???
You obviously didn't smoke cigarettes in the 20th century.
This explains it better than my grade 9 science teacher did, who answered with, "Well, it's kind of like plasma, but isn't really. It's complicated" then changed the subject and moved on with the lesson.
I remember my high school chemistry teacher explaining this same thing to us as fire isn't a thing, it's an event.
I feel like we’re glossing over Hank’s incredible one-handed matchbook strike
I remember I had to answer this question when teaching a(n outreach) class of 2nd graders - I can't wait to see what you come up with!
On watching the video: huh. I gave the second graders a similar answer... I told them that fire wasn't matter, but that it was energy being released as somethingwent from "thing" to ash. I don't know if I agree that fire is a process - I think it is the by product of a process. It is what energy looks like when released amidst the process of combustion.
@@Karishma_Unspecified I think it's safe to call fire a process: a process that (rather like the waterfall, in fact) involves the release of energy.
@@qwertyTRiG hmm...
I think it boils down to the semantics of what constitutes a process and what constitutes a by product.
But yeah, you're right - it is safer to call it a process (or a reaction) than a by product, because yes, fire isn't _just_ the energy... it is the *reaction* of the air and the soot to said energy.
Though from a 2nd grade perspective, where the class is about the states of matter (and they learned about energy a couple days ago), I stand by my answer :)
I can't count how many times I've had this conversation. Fire is not matter, it is a reaction. I wholeheartedly agree. Thank you for making this video. I'm going to rack up so many views for you in sharing this as proof lol.
Excellent video as always. I like to think of it as a plasma, at least that is what I tell my students. I heard Carl Sagan long ago say that and it seems to fit even though we think of plasma occurring at higher temps. As you pointed out, it is a process where the chemicals (S,,L, or G) are changing, at that instance when the bonds are breaking, electrons are freed from the protons in the nucleus. That is pretty much the definition of plasma - unbound elementary particles i.e. electrons and protons. So for that instance the fire is a plasma. - Cheers Kurt
This video made me feel validated. I saw the title and immediately thought, "fire isn't matter; it's a chemical reaction". Then, Hank said, "this is really hard to answer" and I thought "no it isn't". Then he spent the rest of the video explaining why people get confused before finishing with the answer I gave right away.
I feel smert now.
This logic could be extended to say "Humans are a process" as well, which has some enjoyable implications about personal growth / change over time (even if the discussion started in the very literal realm)
Just ask Alfred North Whitehead
Okay, John Green. Not everything has to be made into a good metaphor.
My sense of humor usually hovers around age 13. You just got it to jump to about 18 when you held a spoon over a flame. Thank you for that. And on a serious note, thanks for the exploration of fire!
Hank, do you ever think about the fact that you're a professional nerd? It's aspirational, frankly
I should be listening to this video because it's filled with useful information HOWEVER I am utterly CAPTIVATED by how Hank lit that match.
As a high school science teacher who gets asked this question all the time... Thank you Hank :)
Thank you so much for making this video! I asked this question to my fifth grade teacher and didn't get a straight answer and from then until the present day where it's my first year in college, I forgot about the question, but it's really nice to have an actual answer now!
Pleasantly surprised you answered this question correctly.
A year old comment from a verified channel with only 10 likes?
@@ecave3435 Most of them only have 10-30 likes. And many under 10 also.
Probably not many people liked it because well, it's wrong. ;)
@@nowandrew4442 i know, it's just that this is my first time encountering this in the wild
My first question to the question was "what state of matter is melting?" So with you jumping to a similar thought, I can see I've spent many years getting Science stuff from you! As you said, Fire is a just the process of one state of matter moving to other states of matter, like melting, freezing, etc!
This makes me think of fire as a threshold: not here nor these but the space between spaces - the flow between being one thing and another.
I also think a good way to explain it is, "What state of matter is boiling water?" Cause most people know boiling descibes something CHANGING state, so the question is weird....... Burning is a chemical process, so although state changes arent required for chemical processes, they can be present.
I have been wondering about the answer to this question since I was 12 years old.
I've googled, read, asked teachers and professors, and never gotten a satisfactory answer
Thank you SO much for finally answering this
What sort of wizardry did you use to light that match? I watched it 3 times at regular speed, 3 times at half speed, and once at .25 speed and I'm pretty sure it was just magic.
if you use the . hotkey that Hank told us about last week to go one frame at a time, you can see a couple more things: he seems to be holding the matchbox between his pinkie and ring finger, and....flicking?...his...thumb and index finger over the....top...? yeah, I still don't understand how he did that
Magic. It's simple.
Literally asked my middle school science teacher this question and she didn't know and it's haunted me ever since, thank you king
I always thought fire was a plasma but I like the waterfall process analogy
I asked this exact question in my HS chem class and got MANY different answers which all seemed to me to dance around the heart of the "matter" - it's heat, it's light, etc, etc... answers that described the characteristics of a flame, but not the substance of it. Thank you for this concise, cogent explanation!
And how did you know my name?
Soooooo correct me if i’m wrong, but is asking what state of matter fire is, kinda as pointless as asking what state of matter photosynthesis is? (Sry if this is completely wrong i’m just starting chemistry in highschool)
This answer is not what I expected, but you explained it very well.
I now have a new perspective on fire.
How do you decide to make this a Sci show video or a vlogbrothers video?
Yay! More of this type of video! This was what I was going for in the nerdfighteria census question - more explanations of weird and complicated things please 😁