The fire that water cannot extinguish!

Today we talked about combustion, looking closely at how it can actually contribute to extinguishing fires.

As a knowledge base, our young scientists used cooking oil, as a basis for understanding what is necessary to successfully put out a fire, fuel properties. We explored oil that had been heated to around 400°F and caught fire. It was discovered, with some surprise, that adding water would be disastrous, it would actually contribute to the fire.

As part of our ongoing exploration of Oxygen, we looked at its atomic structure and electron clouds. We also discovered that Oxygen likes to be in pairs, as it needs two electrons to be perfect, and instead of stealing these two from other elements it shares it with one another!