Oxygen and Hydrogen are combustible gases, water a mixture of both is a fire extinguisher How?

Answer 1

Oxygen and hydrogen are gases. Water may be a mixture of both, but water is a liquid. Liquids and gases have very different properties, and one of the main properties of water is that it is damp and wet.

A fire needs three things to burn: a spark, fuel, and oxygen. When one of these three is compensated, the fire will usually go out. Dousing a fire with water makes the fuel harder to burn, and also may put out the spark.

Answer 2

Water is not a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen, it is a compound made from oxygen and hydrogen. During a combustion of hydrogen the hydrogen atoms are oxidised while the oxygen atoms in turn are reduced. The product of this reaction is water. The bonds formed in a water molecule are stable so it could not react further. This is why water could not combust.

Answer 3

The reason H2O is a fire extinguisher is because the covalent bond of oxygen and hydrogen is stable. This means the electron orbiting the nucleus of the hydrogen atom joins with the 6 electrons orbiting the nucleus of the oxygen atom's outer shell to form a stable substance because the bond creates two full shells in a molecule of water.

Answer 4

When elements combine to form a compound (such as water) the compound has completely different chemical properties from the original elements.
Water smothers a fire by removing any gaseous oxygen from reaching the flames (oxygen itself doesn't burn, but fire requires oxygen to keep burning).

Its like ordinary table salt - sodium and chlorine.
Sodium reacts violently with water, and chlorine is a poisonous gas.
But when in a compound they are an important component of most life on Earth (and make the potatoes taste good).

Answer 5

oxygen is a supporter of combustion and hydrogen is a combustible gas but water is a compound consisting of hydrogen and oxygen . when a two elements combine to form a compound the product is completely different from the reactants it does not have the properties of reactants.

Answer 6

Oxygen is *NOT* a combustible gas. It supports combustion and is required for combustion but is not itself combustible. Hydrogen combines with oxygen (burns) to form water which as we all know is not combustible.

Answer 7

Water has the atoms of oxygen and hydrogen joined together, so they are no longer the substance of oxygen or hydrogen. They now share electrons and are joined as one. They are H2O.

Answer 8

because the atoms are so tightly enfused in the molecule it's imposible to get the right reaction from combusted raw oxygen or hydrogen...unless you produce an electric charge...then the local water molecules get bombarded with electrons and break apart

Answer 9

water is not a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen. it is the product of their reaction. its molecules are composed of both hydrogen and oxygen atoms (H2O). properties like 'combustibility' are not simply properties of atoms that add and subtract linearly... it is more complicated than that.

Answer 10

Because oxygen is a compound and in a compound,the properties of constituent elements are not represented.Same thing occurs with sodium chloride, sodium is harmful and is kept in kerosene while chloride is a gas with pungent odour but their compund sodium chloride is essential for human body. There are many such compounds.