Friday, March 5, 2010

How Could I Forget Combustion??

It has been brought to my attention that in my recent post about reaction types I forgot explain the combustion reaction. This should be surprising to anyone who knows a chemistry teacher because most of us went in to this career so we could blow stuff up whenever we want...

Or at least that's part of the reason. But seriously, most science teacher are kind of pyromaniacs. So it seems surprising that I could have forgotten the type of reaction at the very heart of burning stuff!

Combustion reactions (fire!) are a chemical reaction between a hydrocarbon and oxygen. "Hydrocarbon" is a fancy word for a compound made only of carbon and hydrogen in some combination. This includes things most of us have heard of, like methane, propane and butane. They always produce carbon dioxide and water, which makes them easiest of all the reaction types to predict products for.








So, there you are. The last (and most fun) reaction type!

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