this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2023
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

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Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material. Water is 2 hydrogen and 1 oxygen. Every molecule is fully oxidized. It's also a common byproduct of fire. Therefore, you can't burn it, because it's already burnt

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[–] brygphilomena@lemmy.world 99 points 1 year ago (15 children)

Oh man... Wait until you hear about fires hot enough that if you put water on then, it breaks the water molecule and the hydrogen molecules cause an explosion.

Look up class D fires.

[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 45 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Furthermore, you can burn water with a strong enough oxidizer. Oxygen, despite lending its name to the word "oxidize", is not the best oxidizer out there. That belongs to things with fluorine in it. You can burn water with pure fluorine gas to produce hydrogen fluoride and oxygen.

Don't try this at home. Both fluorine and the resulting HF is deadky.

HF is itself a super nasty piece of work -- a deadly acid that seeps through your skin and kills you from the inside.

[–] Fordiman@programming.dev 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The fun part about that: you can burn hydrogen with fluorine because fluorine is the best oxidizer; it's then deadly (and caustic) because hydrogen is not the best reducer - it's both an oxidizer and a reducer and, as a result, it's basically middle-of-the-road for both properties. Specifically, most metals are better. So the HF will happily drop its hydrogen for many metals to oxidize (fluoridate) them instead. Lead, iron, zinc, aluminum, magnesium, and lithium will each make a way more stable fluoride than does hydrogen.

In solution (say, if you inhale HF, it'll dissolve into the moisture in your lungs), it breaks apart into H⁺ and F⁻ ions - both of which are just straight-up electrochemically promiscuous. The pair'll run through your lungs breaking up organic bonds like couples at an orgy.

Even so, HF doesn't hold a candle in terms of danger (and oxidation potential) compared to fluorine peroxide / dioxygen difluoride / FOOF.

[–] Revan343@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

That looks like even more fun than chlorine trifluoride

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