Investigating What Common Household Liquids Will Extinguish a Fire the Quickest

Overview

Objectives/Goals The objective is to investigate and determine what common household liquids would extinguish a fire the quickest. Methods/Materials I started with cutting a Dura Flame log into 14 slices and putting them into induvidual mediium sized alluminum trays. I then lit the logs and let them burn into a full flame. I made an extinguisher by putting common household liquids into a sprayer. 4 cups of each variable. Variables were: Soapy water, coca cola, vinegar, apple juice, grape juice, lemon juice. Water was the control. I pumped sprayer 25 times then srayed liquid onto the fire. Counted amount of sprays, and amount of time it took to extinguish fire completely. I also measured amount of liquid used. 2 trials for each variable. Results Liquids that were sweet or sugary had little effect on extinguishing a fire. Liquids that were acidic such as soapy water or vinegar had a big effect on extinguishing a fire. Vinegar had the strongest effect. The lowest amount of sprays was 60 sprays. It is also the shortest amount of time and least amount of liquid used. Vinegar worked even better than the control. (water) Conclusions/Discussion Based on these results, If you were to have kitchen fire, or small house fire where water wasn't readily available. You could grab a botlle of vinegar, and extinguish the fire that way, before it got out of control. Vinegar suffocated the fire quickly. Vinegar is carbinated and acidic, which when heated, turns into a gas or vapor that is more dense than oxygen so the gas pushed out the oxygen and suffocated the fire.

Competition history

• CSEF 2007 Materials Science (Junior Division Only) · Entry J1217

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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