• Question: What happens when a thermal insolator gets too hot, For example a peice of metal going over the tempature of 100 or even 1000 degrees! Dose it explode like a battery or dose it melt dose it catch fire?

    Asked by anon-349555 on 9 Feb 2023.
    • Photo: Jenny Roberts

      Jenny Roberts answered on 9 Feb 2023:

      It might melt, or it might start to deform (bend or blister). It might catch fire if the material is flammable. It might explode if there’s a pressure build up (like when you shake a bottle of fizzy drink and it spurts out everywhere – the build up of carbon dioxide bubbles creates too much pressure in the bottle and it has to escape causing the fountain of drink to explode out of the bottle).

      So, the answer to your question is that it depends on the material.

      My house was struck by lightening once and the lightening went through the copper heating pipes to the ground (to the earth). The insulating material around the heating pipes got so hot it all burned off, but ordinarily it wouldn’t have done that.

    • Photo: Ollie Thomas

      Ollie Thomas answered on 10 Feb 2023:

      This is a good question. The funny thing about insulators is that they work because heat energy can’t spread from one part to another. What this means is that they are prone to getting very hot in a small area because they can’t spread the heat around. This often leads to them burning, catching fire, or, in science speak, decomposing and often this releases gasses. Things insulators are commonly made out of such as plastics can give off some quite nasty gasses so it is best not to let them get too hot.

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