why does wood burn red with a yellow flame and gas burn blue and some thing go white hot?

Question

i'm assuming its to do with temperature if so what persentage is heat and how much of the energy is converted to light

Answer 1

One more thing to add. Wood carries ions of several inorganic elements. Gas does not carry these contaminates. The yellow orange flame in a wood fire is from one of those ions - sodium. When I was a kid they used to sell special holiday logs that had green or red flames. What elements do you think those were? I’ll give you a hint the red one is still used in road flares and fireworks.

Sodium is found in most living tissue. And a good deal of that sodium is left behind in the ash after a fire. In days long ago, people used to make soda ash (Na2CO3) and caustic soda (NaOH) from the ashes of a fire.

Answer 2

Imagine an object heating up.

It would start to gently glow red as the temperature increases. Then it would glow an orange colour, and as the temperature gets high enough it would glow white hot.

Now imagine you continue to heat it, it would glow green, then blue, then violet.

These higher energy colours correspond directly to the energy emission from the item heated. The gas burns more efficiently than the wood, and therrefore gives out more energy hence the higher energy colour.

One last thing to remember is that the colour of the flame can depend on the constituants of the material.

Answer 3

you are correct in that the heat of the flame determines its color, but I dont know the ratio of heat to light. When an electron absorbs enough energy to move up an orbital, on its way down it will release that energy in the form of light rays. You can make all sorts of different color flames with this phenomenon

Answer 4

some potato chip packets burn with a green flame, it all depends on the chemical makeup of what you are burning

Answer 5

I think its something to do with the colours its made up of, Like the sun reflects on things, and when they absorb a certain colour, thats what colour they are.. I dont really know, Im useless =|

Answer 6

it depends on carbon particles.
the carbon particles are limited in gas cylinder's gas (propane), but wood is untreated.
the blue it is, the more sooner the pot gets hot

Answer 7

hahahahahahahahaha here's one A blonde goes into a shop to buy some hair dye, but comes back the next day to retern it, the shop keeper says "why do you want to retern it" the person says "because I bought a blonde hair dye"

Answer 8

It depends on which chemicals are involved - look at fireworks for example!

Answer 9

Hello,
You got great answer there. I can only say I agree
Bye.