User blog:Glflegolas/A GIF of the thermite reaction

Hello everyone,

First, I am going to warn you -- do not try this at home! This involves a metal fire, which cannot be put out using a household ABC fire extinguisher.

Today, I was doing the thermite reaction -- in small scale, that is (~0.25 grams of aluminum and iron oxide each)

The thermite reaction is a single-displacement reaction between aluminum metal and iron oxide, both in finely powdered form. It works out to:

2Al + Fe2O3 -> 2Fe + Al2O3

This reaction is self-oxidizing; that means, it provides all the oxygen it needs to keep itself going, without any extra input.

Here's a beautiful GIF I made of the reaction using still images taken from 1080p HD video.



Trust me, the reaction looks much nicer on screen than IRL (all this happens within about two seconds IRL, and the light from the initial flash is so bright that it's impossible to see much). Note the colour of the outside of the crucible while the reaction is going full speed: yellow-white. That corresponds to a temperature of around 4'000 Kelvin. For comparison, an electic heating element (the kind on your stovetop or toaster) doesn't exceed about 700 Kelvin, and a candle flame is about 1800 Kelvin. The brilliant white flame you see is gaseous iron burning in oxygen (yes, 4000 Kelvin is hot enough to boil the iron formed by this reaction!).

I hope you enjoy this!

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