Does fire flames conduct electricity? ~ EVERYDAY SCIENCE

Does fire flames conduct electricity?

Did you ever give a thought that the fire that gives us heat is an insulator or conductor of electricity? Is it possible to pass current or electricity through flames of fire? Let's try to know the answer for these questions in this fascinating article.
Before I give you answer to this question, let's first understand how current or electricity passes through any object. The current is nothing but the flow of electrons or ions. When there is a potential difference between any two points, then electron flows towards the positive terminal of the battery. This flow of electrons and ions produces current in the external wire.

Does fire flames conduct electricity?

Now one thing is clear from the above information that electricity needs free electrons or ions to pass through any object. As for example, metals have a lot of free electrons, thus metals are a good conductor of electricity. On the other hand material like wood, stone and plastic don't have enough free electrons, thus they don't conduct electricity and hence are an insulator.
Now let's come to our main question i.e. if the fire is a good conductor of electricity or is an insulator. So according to above-stated condition, we need free electrons or ions to conduct electricity. But fire is not an element and it doesn't have any free electron. Fire is just the heat with high temperature produced from burning any material like wood. But one thing that fire can do is this that it can ionise the air present near or within its flames. Ionisation is a process in which when enough amount of heat or energy is given to atom of any element, the electron present in the outermost shell of that atom gets free and thus that atom becomes ionized. So fire flames have huge temperature and it may ionise the air and thus may produce some free ions. But the point is this that fire flames only produce few of these ions, which are not sufficient to conduct electricity. Thus in normal case fire is an insulator.

Does fire flames conduct electricity?

But if we apply a huge potential difference between the flames of the fire, then more of these free ions would be produced due to ionisation of air. And this would be sufficient to conduct electricity. But it is due to the huge potential difference applied across fire flames that it conducts electricity, but in everyday life, we don't generally do so. Thus we can conclude that fire can't conduct electricity in its own.

Do you know that forest fire can move faster uphill than downhill. The steeper the slope, faster the fire travels.

Thanks for reading our post Does fire flames conduct electricity? Hope you gain your knowledge about this topic and you learn an interesting topic about the science facts.

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