hydrogen and oxygen are flamable but when combined produce water which puts off fire????

Answer 1

That's chemistry for you, interesting huh

Answer 2

When something burns it reacts with the oxygen to form an oxide. In water the oxygen has too tight a hold on the hydrogen's electron and does not want to let go to react with another substance. Thats also the reason why water is a liquid when - at a molecular weight of 18 - is should be a gas. The unequal sharing sets up a charge the oxygen holds onto the electron and the charge on the oxygen attracts the charge on the hydrogen. This is all just vaguely remembered from my chemistry about 20 years so apologies if it is slightly wrong.

Answer 3

This is due to the fact that compounds do not inherit the properties of it's constituent elements. The combined elements produce molecules that have different properties and interaction with other molecules.

Also water puts out fire by depriving the flame of oxygen to continue to fuel the fire, because the oxygen present in the wate is bound to the hydrogen and thus not free to take part in the chemical reaction which sustains the fire.

Answer 4

Hydrogen is flamable, but Oxygen is not flamable. It combines with 2 parts of Hydrogen and overcomes the property of hydrogen (that of flamability) to form water and thus puts off fire.

Answer 5

Ah the typical chemistry question why is it when two elements combine the compound is of a different property. Firstly, if there is a flame with no other fuel and you place it in pure oxygen, the flame would die out as oxygen itself is not flammable. When hydrogen burns in oxygen, the product is water. Hydrogen's and oxygen's total energy level is higher than water if i'm not wrong. Thus water is more stable and the overall energy change(enthalpy) is negative, thus being exothermic(your flame and fire). However when trying to burn water, the bonds would be broken between the oxgen and hydrogen(this requires a lot of energy), thus the reaction is endothermic; the water wouldn't burn but would draw energy from the flame to break up. This is like heating other compounds to decompose them. Next on putting out fire. I believe that(correct me if i'm wrong) water having a high specific heat capacity would absorb a lot of energy thus effectively cooling off. That's why we sweat to cool down and our body is mostly water to allow better thermal control of our body temperature. Hope this helps. I think you can find out more from textbooks on chemistry available.

Answer 6

Yes, indeed, water puts out fire. But ask a fire-officer what happens in an intensly-high temperature fire. Then, there is so much energy available, the H.H..O bond is broken in the water molecules, and the Hydrogen and Oxygen actually fuel the already intense fire! Time for serious application of frozen CO2, Liquid Nitrogen or sand. Very rare, but these fires do happen.

Answer 7

When you burn hydrogen, it combines with oxygen and the byproduct is water. That's why water won't burn,it already has.

Water puts out fire in a couple of ways. When water hits the fire it heats and turns to steam. Water has a high heat of vaporization so in turning to steam, it pulls a tremendous amount of heat cooling thnigs down below the temperature they need to burn. The combination of steam and water also cut off the oxygen supply to the fire.

Answer 8

It is true that water puts out fire...but how often do we burn hydrogen? We usually burn carbon-based products that produce, for the most part, CO2.

On the a couple of occasions that I have seen hydrogen burn in the lab it is such a violent and exothermic reaction that the baloon containing the gases gets obliterated and any products, ie the water, gets blown into a puff of vapour that you don't even see.

This is of no relevance when discussing, for example a house burning down.

Answer 9

Oxygen is not a Flamable Gas

Answer 10

Water is a combination of two elements. when any elements combine, their characteristic changes, what use to burn now does not, in order for H2 to burn it needs to be seperated from the Oxygen. Also for example H2 under normal conditions is a gas and so is Oxygen, but combined it is a liquid, which smothers out fire,

Answer 11

Chemistry for you....

Electrolosis on water gives off hydrogen / oxygen at the
electrodes, Ignite them *BANG!* and water again forms...

MMMmmmm Nice idea for a car engine eh???? ;-)

Btw once 'Combined' they become a stable molecule h2o
complete 8 electrons (The Hydrogen having 1 each and oxygen 6)