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Name: brendan
Status: student
Grade: 6-8
Location: PA 
Country: N/A
Date: 10/25/2005
Question:
Why wont your finger melt in a fire?

Replies:
Your finger is made up of very complicated molecules all connected together by chemical bonds. So are plants and other animals. These molecules cannot be separated from one another. Specific chemical substances, for example water, can be in three common forms solid, liquid, and vapor. In the solid the molecules are held in place, called a crystal, when the temperature gets high enough -- and this depends upon what the substance is -- the molecules can "jiggle around" enough that they can move past one another fairly easily. This is the liquid state and the temperature where that happens is called the melting point. At an even higher temperature the molecules "jiggle around" even more and they can be "bounced" into a gas -- called the vapor. Very complicated molecules can't behave like this because they are all connected together.

Vince Calder


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