Question

A peace of cloth was soaked in oil and burnt. The cloth caught fire but did not burn. Why?

Answer 1

Hey !

Solution:

Note the first line to be a piece of cloth soaked in water. So the piece of cloth after soaking in water has some amount of water molecules inside the cloth.

After the cloth is soaked in water, it is again soaked in oil. So we know notice oil to be deposited on the cloth. But our assumption here is wrong.

Oil by nature has high inflammability. But we know that oil and water are immiscible liquids. Therefore oil will just be present in the cloth's outer covering but it will just occupy spaces in the cloth which are not occupied by water.

Now the cloth has both Oil and water. So the cloth on burning won't burn. This is because even though oil is highly inflammable, the water molecules present in the cloth make the cloth damp thereby increasing the ignition temperature required by the cloth. Also on heating, the oil droplets get into the fire but they wont get inflamed.

So due to low ignition temperature attained by the cloth, the cloth doesn't burn.

Hope my answer helped !