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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Saeviomagy" data-source="post: 992426" data-attributes="member: 5890">You're flat-out wrong.Think hard. Why is wet paper not flammable? Is the paper still there? Yes. So why is it suddenly not burning? Because there's some water nearby? What does that have to do with it?What spectacular property does water have that it stops chemical reactions in molecules near it?What is happening when the wet cup gets heated?The water turns to steam. You said so yourself.What do you suppose is required to turn water into steam. I'll tell you - heat.If that heat is turning water into steam,  then it's no longer available to ignite the paper cup.Furthermore, the act of water turning to steam uses up more energy than raising the temperature of the water from 99 to 100 degrees.Additionally, the evaporating water takes some of the heat with it.I would expect that if this experiment doesn't work in a plastic container, then it is due to one or both of the following factors:1. Plastic is a good insulator, and in the average plastic container, theres significantly more plastic between the heat source and the water than with the paper container.2. The melting point of the plastic in question is lower than the boiling point of water.Given that this principle is widely known and applied (ever wondered what a heatsink is for?), I think you may want to hit your physics books a bit more.Also Conaill - your examples don't work because of the amount of air. It works because of the temperature that the material can be raised to. If you take a 1kg block of iron, and file it into a powder, then the amount of energy required to ignite all of it is still the same as the amount of energy required to ignite it when it was a block. The real difference is that the iron as a powder cannot conduct heat away quickly - instead of heating the entire iron block, you heat only the parts exposed to flame, and they therefore get much hotter, then reach their activation point and start combusting. The combusting iron then applies heat to the powder nearest it etc. While it is true that starving a reaction of oxygen will cause it to fail, starving a reaction of heat will cause the same thing.</blockquote>

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