Page 34 - Curriculum Visions Dynamic Book

Combustion
Oxygen itself is noncombustible, even though one of the most striking characteristics of oxygen is how it reacts much more quickly at high temperatures compared with normal environmental temperatures. The chemical reaction is called oxidation, but the rapid effect is known as combustion.
A clear example of this is wood. At room temperature we can use wood for furniture, flooring and as roofs for our houses. At these low temperatures wood hardly reacts at all with oxygen, making it possible for wooden structures to last for many hundreds of years.
But if we increase the temperature of the wood, the rate of reaction with
air increases dramatically. Thus we can use wood as a fuel to burn. At these higher temperatures, the chemical reaction that occurs gives out a large amount of heat.
 Steel wool such
as that shown held in the metal tongs on the left is being heated by
a Bunsen flame in the picture to the right. It will simply glow red hot.
 Heated steel wool burning in a gas jar of oxygen. Notice
the steel is burning (there is no other source of flame) and steel droplets are falling to the bottom of the gas jar. The water in the gas jar is there to douse the droplets of iron oxide as they fall.
EQUATION: Burning steel wool
Iron + oxygen ➪ iron oxide
4Fe(s) + 3O2(g) ➪ 2Fe2O3(s)
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