The Royal Institution
It’s a terrible idea to try to extinguish burning metal with a water or CO2 fire extinguisher. Steve Mould shows why.
Subscribe for regular science videos from the Ri: http://bit.ly/RiSubscRibe and be sure you check out Steve’s channel – https://www.youtube.com/stevemould
The working principle of a carbon dioxide fire extinguisher is that it starves a fire of oxygen. However, carbon dioxide itself has two oxygen atoms for every one carbon atom, and in the case of metal fires, the burning metal strips CO2 of its oxygen atoms, thereby adding more oxygen to the mix. It’s even worse with water fire extinguishers, as when the oxygen atoms are stripped, only hydrogen remains, which is in itself explosive.
The correct way to put out a metal fire is with a powder fire extinguisher that covers the fire entirely with non-reactive powder.
Link to the chladni figures video Steve recommended – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR_XL192wXw
Link to this video without any music – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LvuH3D7CCo
—
A very special thank you to our Patreon supporters who help make these videos happen, especially:
Alessandro Mecca, Ashok Bommisetti, bestape, David Lindo, Elizabeth Greasley, Greg Nagel, John Pollock, Lester Su, manish upmanyu, Osian Gwyn Williams, Radu Tizu, Rebecca Pan, Roger Baker, Sergei Solovev, and Will Knott.
—
The Ri is on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TheRoyalInstitution
and Twitter: http://twitter.com/ri_science
and Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/royalinstitution
and Tumblr: http://ri-science.tumblr.com/
Our editorial policy: http://www.rigb.org/home/editorial-policy
Subscribe for the latest science videos: http://bit.ly/RiNewsletter
Source
Science is FUN!!!!
BYOO. Bring your own oxidizer.
What is new an not putting water in an Aluminium fire. You don't need a stupid risk assessments for this. It's in all in text books if you pay attention in the 7-8th grade of your chemistry class.
You can extinguish any sort of fun with Metallica.
American viewers are asking why in the UK all our fire extinguishers ARE ALL THE SAME COLOUR irrespective of what they contain. Thats EU directives for you, absolutely mental.
Do not put out metal fires with Steve Mould.
One thing I used to love to do when I had access to lots of magnesium turnings is to put a pile on top of a mound of snow.
You start the magnesium burning and it will slowly start to melt the snow. When it melts enough and the burning metal begins to shift, you get a good flare up and it melts through the snow very rapidly. There's a real nice glow coming out of the snow and lots of popping. It could be dangerous if you did a huge amount but the channel that melts helps keep it contained.
Glad so many are enjoying the video, we had a great time making it! And a quick note – our roof is obviously not tar paper, it's lead. You might enjoy some of the other things we've blown up there over the past 200 years – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC45vREoEOg
To simplify: It's really just the high temperature (of 4,000 °F) which separates the atoms
from the molecules (of the water/CO2) allowing the magnesium atoms to react with the
(now available) oxygen atoms, and to continue to burn. Is this correct? So, apparently
aluminum burns just as hot? And just wondering here, what is the exact temperature
that is necessary for this "molecule splitting affect" (of water/CO2) to occur? Google
says it starts at 3,632 °F for water, but it won't tell me what it is for CO2. It also won't
tell me the temperature of an aluminium fire, but it does tell me the temperature of a
magnesium fire (4,000 °F, as mentioned above). I just don't get why google tells you
some things, and then intentionally misreads your question about others, picking out
certain words and making up it's own question to answer, that you've never even asked.
Like it suddenly doesn't speak english whenever it feels like. It's like it's trying to annoy
you, on purpose. It's like sick in the head, or something.
fume hood? nope … just take it up to the roof. bloody brilliant fire safety
is it just me or was this one of the more poorly planned science videos you've seen? how does a science nerd not know to avoid water with metal fires? that's like, the second thing you learn in high school chemistry. also that splatter shield was useless. eye protection is great and all, but if a piece of combusting Mg splatters on your skin it'll do to you what that water did to the fire – light you up like a human torch.
Seriously this guy works for the Royal Institution and he doesn't understand the activity series?!
Cue the health and safety wowsers…..
Maybe a parking lot or spot in the yard would make more sense than the rubberized roof of a building. I imagine that the inside of a fume hood would have been far safer…
What a windbag. Never even talked about the kind of powder used to put it out.
Do the safety goggles filter out the high intensity ultraviolet radiation from the magnesium?
I would have though that you would have demonstrated how to actually put out a metal fire.
What about nitrogen?
Need purple k
Dude! I've learned that a while back. Look for the Houston for work factory fire back around 2000. They were spraying water then the magnesium lit and blew the up
And hydrogen is not explosive, it's highly flammable. Explosions require compression but anything flammable can be explosive.
Water seems like a good way. The fuel will run out faster that way.
Hope your goggles are UV protecting. (gaag!)
Interesting vid, i would like to see what would happen if you poured sand on the metal fire.
It would be worth mentioning that magnesium not only produces a very bright white light but also ultraviolet light, it may not be especially good for your eyes if one sets fire to metal on a regular basis without using some type UV eye protection as well.
Nice explanation. Reminds me of old declassified videos on the subject of plutonium turnings catching on fire and being extremely difficult to extinguish.
Don't feel too bad about failing to put out an aluminum fire with water. There was a (non-metal) fire at a factory in Nevada (U.S.) that made small rocket motors. The fire department came and managed to put it out, but as they were hosing down the surrounding area, they hosed down a large container of aluminum powder used in making the rocket motors. They suddenly had a large fire on their hands that destroyed the entire factory. Even the pros screw up.
Best method is dumping damp sand on burning magnesium. Used it loads of times in steel making plant where they use magnesium to remove the sulphur from the steel.
Now do it with N-Stoff.
So you should be able to put out metal fires with pure nitrogen, right?