why do flammable and inflammable mean the same?
363297
regardless and irregardless....Some things demand a 'What?'
576023
One is a medical term, the other is slang term, both are identical.
278777
It is actually the fumes that burn, and yes, they are flammable.  All alcohol is flammable if it is in strong enough concentration.  Overproof rum and liqueurs bur too, or at least their fumes do.
264183
Every chemical workers are exposed to in the workplace are supposed to have a hazard label with information including flammability, health hazards and safety precautions as well as exposure limits and first aid instructions in case of accidental exposure. Since there are thousands of such chemicals, I suggest you read the labels of the chemicals you could come in contact with at your work and learn the precautions.
977182
Who cares, all flames are hot.\n\n"The color and temperature of a flame are dependent on the type of fuel involved in the combustion."
612104
The explanations of fire in most standard reference works, not to put too fine a point on it, suck. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, for example, takes the following ineffectual stab: "rapid burning of combustible material with the evolution of heat and usually accompanied by flame." No wonder people have lost faith in science. Time to let a professional show how it's done. We'll start by reviewing the defects of the EB definition.\n\n(1) Rapid burning. OK, fire burns rapidly. Slow combustion, also known as oxidation, includes such nonfiery processes as rusting and digestion. However, to say that fire involves burning is to embark on a circular definition: What is fire? When something burns. What is burning? When something is on fire. We need to address the matter in more basic terms.\n\n(2) Combustible materials. Redundant. If a material is capable of rapid burning, by definition it's combustible. Also, "materials" is needlessly vague. One specific material, oxygen, is always involved.\n\n(3) Evolution of heat. I don't know what this is supposed to mean either.\n\n(4) Usually accompanied by flame. "Usually accompanied by" my arse. Flame is the quintessential pyrolytic phenomenon, not a mere by-product.\n\nNow for a proper definition, devised by myself: "Fire is the rapid combination of oxygen with fuel in the presence of heat, typically characterized by flame, a body of incandescent gas that contains and sustains the reaction and emits light and heat." Let's go through this bit by bit:\n\n(1) Rapid combination of oxygen with fuel in the presence of heat. Oxygen, fuel, and heat are the essential ingredients of fire. \n\n(2) Typically characterized by flame. The pup qualifier "typically" allows me to sidestep the issue of apparently nonflaming fires, like you get with burning charcoal. I suspect charcoal fires do create flame--you just can't see it due to the lack of impurities or incompletely burned fuel in the plume. (You can't see a fuel fire at an Indy or CART race either, because the cars run on clean-burning methanol.) But that's a matter we can leave for another day.\n\n(3) Body of incandescent gas. Flame defined. Most encyclopedia and dictionary definitions blow past this entirely, allowing persons such as yourself to imagine that fire is "pure energy" or similar nonsense. We say "body" because the gas has a characteristic structure and composition. We say "incandescent" because (a) it sounds scientific, (b) it means "luminous with intense heat," precisely what we are attempting to convey, and (c) if the Teeming Millions are going to learn one vocabulary word today, by God "incandescent" should be it.\n\n(4) Contains and sustains the reaction. Flame isn't just the result of fire; it is the fire. What's more, without the flame's heat the fire would go out.\n\n(5) Emits light and heat. Duh. However, we mustn't overlook the obvious.  \n\n>>>why do things that are put in it come out totally destroyed?\n\nOf course most things that go into fire aren’t totally destroyed. Most metals, glass, ceramic and so forth all emerge unscathed from fire. Even wood and paper aren’t totally destroyed, they leave an ash and charcoal residue as well as fine particles that we can see as soot and smoke.\n\nFire will ‘destroy’ anything organic that can be completely oxidised at the temperature that it burns at, but that is simply because the oxidation process converts the organic material to carbon dioxide,  and water. IOW the material isn’t destroyed it is just converted to gas and that gas blows away.\n\n>>>>>what fuel does it need from say, paper,\n\nThe paper IS the fuel the fire needs. The fire converts the paper into gases and ash. Or more accurately fire is the process of converting paper into gases and ash.
146566
A flame is a mixture of gases undergoing a chemical reaction that gives off enough heat to continue the reaction in the molecules that have not yet reacted.  We get the impression that solids (like wood) burn, but it's really mainly the gases coming off of them that burn.  That's why it's easier to start a hot piece of wood on fire than a cold piece of wood.  The initial piece has to be hot enough so that the flamable products escape from it in vapor form.
1131939
when referring to a fire burning down:  this is the process of a house fire as it is burning.  It is the action at the time.  The house is burning down.  \nwhen referring to a fire burning up:  this is the end result.  The house has burned up.
655816
The flash point of a flammable liquid is the lowest temperature at which it can form an ignitable mixture with air. At this temperature the vapor may cease to burn when the source of ignition is removed. A slightly higher temperature, the fire point, is defined at which the vapor continues to burn after being ignited. Neither of these parameters is related to the temperatures of the ignition source or of the burning liquid, which are much higher. The flash point is often used as one descriptive characteristic of liquid fuel, but it is also used to describe liquids that are not used intentionally as fuels.\n\nMechanism\nEvery flammable liquid has a vapor pressure, which is a function of that liquid's temperature. As the temperature increases, the vapor pressure increases. As the vapor pressure increases, the concentration of evaporated flammable liquid in the air increases. Hence it is the temperature which determines the concentration of evaporated flammable liquid in the air under equilibrium conditions. Different flammable liquids require different concentrations of the fuel to be present in the air to sustain combustion. The flash point is that minimum temperature at which there is enough evaporated fuel in the air to start combustion.\n\nMeasuring flash points\nA commonly used device for measuring the flash point of liquid fuels is the Pensky-Martens closed cup. That apparatus consists of a small cup containing the liquid to be observed, which is gradually heated toward its flash point while being stirred continuously in order to distribute the heat uniformly. At regular intervals an open flame is directed into the cup; at the flash point, it will ignite the contents of the cup.\n\nExamples of fuel flashpoints\nPetrol (gasoline) is designed for use in an engine which is driven by a spark. The fuel should be premixed with air within its flammable limits and heated above its flash point, then ignited by the spark plug. The fuel should not preignite in the hot engine. Therefore, gasoline is required to have a low flash point and a high autoignition temperature.\n\nDiesel is designed for use in a high-compression engine. Air is compressed until it has been heated above the autoignition temperature of diesel; then the fuel is injected as a high-pressure spray, keeping the fuel-air mix within the flammable limits of diesel. There is no ignition source. Therefore, diesel is required to have a high flash point and a low autoignition temperature.\n\nPetrol: \nFlash point: >-45 °C \nAutoignition temperature: 246 °C \nDiesel: \nFlash point: >62 °C \nAutoignition temperature: 210 °C \nJet Fuel: \nFlash Point: >50 °C \nAutoignition Temperature: 210 °C
54695
Fire, as a label, is a variable. \n"n.\n1.a. A rapid, persistent chemical change that releases heat and light and is accompanied by flame, especially the exothermic oxidation of a combustible substance." (1)\n\nTo strip out the longer words, fire is something combining with oxygen rapidly enough to produce heat and to be seen as a flame.\n\nDifferent materials do this at different temperatures. The temperature where a fire starts is called a flash point.\n\n"Flash point is the lowest temperature at which a liquid can form an ignitable\nmixture in ... The fire point is usually a few degrees above the flash point. ..." (2)\n\nHere are some sample *fire points* from Wikipedia:\n"   * Silane: <70°F (21°C)\n    * White phosphorus: 93°F (34°C)\n    * Carbon disulfide: 212°F (100°C)\n    * Gasoline: 495°F (257°C)\n    * Butane: 806°F (430°C)\n    * Magnesium: 883°F (473°C)\n    * Hydrogen: 1060°F (571°C)" (3)\n\nWhere we say "ouch" is our "pain point." (4)\n\nIt's a good idea to keep fingers out of fire, but burning ourselves does not need fire. Flame is not the only factor. I have been burnt by hot roofing tar -- 500 degrees F, but not on fire.\n\nThat's probably more than you wanted to know from this question, but it's been sitting here a couple of hours so I thought I'd essay it.
548458
USAGE NOTE   Historically, flammable and inflammable mean the same thing. However, the presence of the prefix in– has misled many people into assuming that inflammable means “not flammable” or “noncombustible.” The prefix –in in inflammable is not, however, the Latin negative prefix –in, which is related to the English –un and appears in such words as indecent and inglorious. Rather, this –in is an intensive prefix derived from the Latin preposition in. This prefix also appears in the word enflame. But many people are not aware of this derivation, and for clarity's sake it is advisable to use only flammable to give warnings.
1059781
States are solid, liquid, gas and plasma...there is no fire state.  Fire is a chemical reaction that occurs when an object is going from one state to another.  A physical reaction is like the melting of ice...it goes from a solid state to a liquid state.  Fire actually changes the chemical makeup of a substance, therefore it is a chemical reaction.\n\nAnd it definitely does NOT have "plasma in it"!  Plasma is extremely rare on earth.
238715
it means burn or burning for example: cauterize
124960
Flame, as opposed to fire, is primarily a plasma, which means that it's a gas in a an excited state. As a substance burns the heat produced causes it to vapourise. As a result solids and liquids don't strictly burn, rather it is the gas evaporating off them that burns. \n\nAs the gas starts to burn it starts to break down into chemically smaller components. As a reuslt of the breakdown the electrons within the gas components become excited and unstable. As they collapse into more chemically stable forms like carbon dioxide the gases lose that excited state in the form of radiated energy that we detect as light and heat. \n\nAs a rsult we see flame as a bright light, sense it as being hot and see it flicker and waver, since it exists as a gas in air. It also only exists for a relatively short distance above the burning substance because the chemcially excited form only exists for a relatively breif period.
893721
The previous answers aren't quite correct.  The word "fluid" can refer to a liquid or a gas.  Liquids are (almost) incompressible but gases can be rather easily compressed by more than an order of magnitude.  An example is the gasoline/air mixture in an internal combustion engine.  It's typically compressed by a factor of 10 to 1.  This will change its density, because the mass remains constant while the volume decreases.
1085698
"Hot" refers to the phrase too "hot" to handle. similar to the expression that car (or anything) is hotter than Hades. One I can't figure is the term rubber check, or bounce unless it refers to the check will bounce back to you because the bank won't honor it. I think I answered my own.  MMMMMMM
641178
"Fire is the rapid combination of oxygen with fuel in the presence of heat, typically characterized by flame, a body of incandescent gas that contains and sustains the reaction and emits light and heat." \n\nLet's go through this bit by bit:\n\n(1) Rapid combination of oxygen with fuel in the presence of heat. Oxygen, fuel, and heat are the essential ingredients of fire.\n\n(2) Typically characterized by flame. The pup qualifier "typically" allows me to sidestep the issue of apparently nonflaming fires, like you get with burning charcoal. I suspect charcoal fires do create flame--you just can't see it due to the lack of impurities or incompletely burned fuel in the plume. (You can't see a fuel fire at an Indy or CART race either, because the cars run on clean-burning methanol.) But that's a matter we can leave for another day.\n\n(3) Body of incandescent gas. Flame defined. Most encyclopedia and dictionary definitions blow past this entirely, allowing persons such as yourself to imagine that fire is "pure energy" or similar nonsense. We say "body" because the gas has a characteristic structure and composition. We say "incandescent" because (a) it sounds scientific, (b) it means "luminous with intense heat," precisely what we are attempting to convey, and (c) if the Teeming Millions are going to learn one vocabulary word today, by God "incandescent" should be it.\n\n(4) Contains and sustains the reaction. Flame isn't just the result of fire; it is the fire. What's more, without the flame's heat the fire would go out.\n\n(5) Emits light and heat. Duh. However, we mustn't overlook the obvious.