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Flame and Star Color
Name: Mary
Status: student
Age: 11
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: Tuesday, December 10, 2002
Question:
When you look at a match burning, you sometimes see a
blue and a yellow flame. I always thought a blue flame was the hottest
and I was wondering how the rest of the colors were ordered?
In further reading I now understand that it is the chemicals in the match
that cause the flame to be a particular color, but do they also correspond
to blue being the hottest temperature etc???
I know stars are ordered by color according to the Hertzprung-Russell
Diagram, blue, white, yellow, orange and the coldest and dimmest stars are red.
I guess my main question is, does a flame have an order of color like
stars and going from hottest to coolest, what is it?
Replies:
The blue in the flame of a match or a candle is not a result of
incandescence, but of luminescence. The bright yellow region of a candle or
match flame comes from incandescence of burning soot, and is determined by
the temperature of the soot particles. The faint blue region of a flame,
however, gets its color from emissions from a transient molecule formed in
the flame, C2.
In general, the hottest region of a flame is near the top of the
luminescent zone.
Richard E. Barrans Jr., Ph.D.
PG Research Foundation, Darien, Illinois
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Update: February 2012
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