OT: Oxygen catching fire?

What's your definition of "burn"?

Oxygen will burn in a hydro-carbon atmosphere.

We've been there up the thread somewhere, it's vice versa. As I have said the test is will oxygen burn in oxygen, i.e. on its own, and the answer is "no".

You can burn oxygen in a star to produce silicon, phosphorus, or sulphur, but you need a temperature of at least 1.5 billyun K to do so.

NB, chemical burning, which is what we're actually talking about, always involves at least two separate substances, so to talk about "burning oxygen in oxygen" is meaningless.

It does in a reducing atmosphere. The oxygen becomes the fuel.

Or rather for something to burn you need a fuel, an oxidiser and a source of ignition (in this case a spark).

Burn propane in air and you get a yellow sooty flame.

Pure propane on its own + spark and you get a bit of carbon soot.

Burn oxygen in propane and you get a bright white noisy flame.

Watch the damn video and pay attention this time! Oxygen burning in a propane atmosphere starts at about 5 minutes in and the flame characteristics are entirely different since it is an oxygen rich core into propane and burns considerably hotter than propane in air.

He couldn't make air burn in propane using a spark as ignition even with a wad of glass fibre to give the flame something to catch on.

ISTR it used to be a cute demo in school chemistry lab open days before health and safety became so strict. Air burning in towns gas and towns gas burning in air inside a shaped glass container. Capable of exploding too if you didn't let the glass container purge properly.

You could react oxygen with fluorine. Fluorine is the oxidiser. Fluorine will oxidise oxygen (and many more things beside).

The reaction is spontaneous at STP you smell oxides of fluorine whenever elemental fluorine is made. Amazingly Prof Haszeldine made some from a eutectic molten salt mix in a lecture theatre in Manchester for a public lecture. On quite a big scale - it would never be permitted today!

Don't even need a spark for things to react with fluorine gas.

Many more things will burn in ClF3 than in oxygen. Glass for instance!