Fiery Dilemma

Chemistry Level pending

You are the ruler of an extraterrestrial planet. The atmosphere of said planet consists entirely of methane gas. One day, a group of earthlings visits your royal palace and demands that you abdicate your throne. They say that if you do not, they will light a match. What do you do?

RUUUNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Let them light the match. Abdicate your throne.

Lukas Leibfried by Lukas Leibfried , 22, USA

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1 solution

Jonas Katona
Dec 27, 2015

While methane is explosive, there is not only a LEL (lower explosive limit) but also an UEL (upper explosive limit), based on the concentration of that gas in a particular system (in this case, the atmosphere). Therefore, if the entire atmosphere was made of methane, it would be "too rich" to explode at once.

0 Helpful 0 Interesting 1 Brilliant 0 Confused

It's more simple than that. If the entire atmosphere consists of methane, there would be no oxygen, meaning that a combustion reaction could not occur. In fact, I'm questioning whether I should have worded the solution the way I did because the earthlings would be unable to light the match in this imaginary planet's atmosphere.

Lukas Leibfried - 5 years, 5 months ago

A match would not light without oxygen.

Robbie Wang - 1 year, 3 months ago

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