Re: rising water level science

Date view Thread view Subject view Author view Attachment view

From: ROY MAYEDA (roymayeda@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Jan 17 2004 - 17:20:56 PST 

Message-ID: <20040118012056.94436.qmail@web20422.mail.yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 17:20:56 -0800 (PST)
From: ROY MAYEDA <roymayeda@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: rising water level science

Treena,
 
Yes, the O2 is replaced by products of combustion: CO2 and H2O. If you are burning a saturated hydrocarbon (wax, etc), the products will replace the O2 1-to-1. Carbohydrates will actually produce more particles of combustion products than O2 used. Not sure how the solubility of CO2 and O2 compare (don't have any of my references available), but the H2O vapor should already be at equilibrium with the liquid H2O in the setup. The catch is that the H2O vapor from combustion will condense on the other surfaces inside the setup, reducing their volume to about 1/1000 of their volume as a gas. Both the condensing of the water vapor and the cooling of the gases after the match goes out will cause the water level to rise. Usually, if I remember correctly, the level rises slowly while the object is burning and then rises quickly after the flame goes out. The condensation rate should be higher after the flame goes out, and obviously the temperature decrease will happen after the flame
 goes out.
 
Does this help, or simply blow more smoke on the water? :-)
 
Roy Mayeda
Still at large and getting larger

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Hotjobs: Enter the "Signing Bonus" Sweepstakes

Date view Thread view Subject view Author view Attachment view

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Mon Aug 02 2004 - 12:05:34 PDT