Question

which chemecals autoignate matchstickhead in air?

Answer 1

a match doesn’t light because it is bought near another piece of paper. On safety matches both the match and the paper are coated in two different chemicals.

The Head of the match contains is coated with a mixture of potassium chlorate, mixed with sulfur, fillers and glass powder. The match paper is coated with red phosphorus, binder and powdered glass - normally laid down in a series of bumps.

When you strike the match head across the match paper - the friction (which is increased significantly by the inclusion of the glass powder) causes a minute amount of red phosphorus to be converted to white phosphorus, which ignites spontaneously in air. This sets off the decomposition of potassium chlorate to give oxygen and potassium chloride. The sulfur catches fire and ignites the wood.

A very simple experiment that you can carry out yourself, and you can confirm that you don’t just need to bring the matchstick close to the paper to ignite it; you can have one lieing on top of the other and they wont ignite. Gently rubbing the matchstick across the paper is unlikely to ignite it either. It needs to be a rapid and firm strike which should be enough to show that friction has some part in the reaction.

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