#flame color

[saraichinwag]

Is Blue Fire the Hottest?

[labphoto]

Something really awesome: the pure green color from flame test of thallium(I) ions. Before anyone plans to try out this experiment: thallium and its compounds are extremely toxic, and should be handled with great care.

Thallium (Greek θαλλός, thallos, meaning "a green shoot or twig") was discovered by flame spectroscopy in 1861. The name comes from thallium's bright green spectral emission lines as seen on the picture.

The two main oxidation states of thallium are +1 and +3. In the oxidation state +1 it is really similar potassium ions, since the ionic radius of thallium(I) is 1.47 Å while that of potassium is 1.33 Å. When it's get in the body it behaves similarly to potassium ions and travels through the whole body and can cause serious damage. For more read : Thallium poisoning case of Zhu Ling

The saturated solution of thallium(I) formate and thallium(I) malonate in water is known as Clerici solution. It has a variable and easily controllable density in the range 1–5 g/cm3 and was used in separating minerals by density with a traditional flotation method.

[mucholderthen]

Flame color of various elements as compounds in burning methanol Photography / design by Cyberchemist on Flickr

[clearscience]

Green fire? I saw it the other day when we threw an empty box, that foil comes in, into the fire in our fireplace. I was just wondering, why was it green? Is green fire the same as blue fire or the orange-tinged normal fire?

Great question, username: grainofawesome. What you'd think of as the "regular" flame color is caused by blackbody radiation from the particles rising up off of something burning. In essence that means the gas and soot that make up "fire" glow simply because they're hot, and hot things glow.

However, if you have certain elements inside of whatever is burning, it can give the flame a distinct non-standard color like green. When molecules get burned, the heat breaks them up into atoms, and the atoms become excited. That means their electrons jump up to higher energy levels. When the electrons jump back down to their regular levels, they give off light of a very specific color. Certain kinds of copper ions lead to green colors, but there are others. There's a Wikipedia page about it if you want to read more.