this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2023
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You can melt anything. An egg will burn first. Then you will get some type of rendered carbon ash. Which will, eventually, melt and/or vaporize with enough heat.
Melting is a physical process that changes the form and aggregation state of a thing, but it still remains that thing. Melted gold is still gold, for example.
Burning on the other hand is a chemical process that leads to new "things". The egg isn't longer an egg.
You're comparing an element to a hyper complex concept (not even a structure).
If you don't agree with him, then you're saying butter doesn't melt.
Water isn't an element, but it still adheres to these rules.
I would argue that it's no longer 'egg' once it's carbon ash and therefore never melted before it's existence ended.
Which came first, the egg or the time dilation of carbon atoms?
Well, for eggs, that are carbon based, you will in fact have problems since carbon doesn't have a liquid state at regular atmospheric pressure. I guess you can add pressure, but is that really what we mean when asking a question if something melt?
If I simply ask "can eggs melt" and the answer is complicated but still yes, I would hope it to explain the complications and not just say yes. But I mean, if I just wanted a yes or no answer, and it's technically correct, I'm cool with that. I could always follow up with "how" if the simple answer doesn't satisfy me.
Well, I agree. But what I mean is that when people ask physics questions, it is often implicitly understood to mean under current conditions. You rarely hear normal people or kids (who I find asks most of the physics question) include anything about frictionless vacuums in the question. (For reference: https://xkcd.com/669/ ). So, for the egg question, regular people would most likely consider the answer to be "No, except under very special circumstances". But, I agree with you that if a simple Yes/No answer is expected, it have to be Yes.
Wouldn't that be true for everything then? 3,400C is pretty special circumstances in my book, yet we say tungsten melts.
I don't think adding heat is a special circumstance like adding pressure is. It's very easy to add heat to something. Adding pressure means building a sealed environment to enclose it's, and some specialized equipment to increase the pressure.
Adding heat requires that you burn something. That's it.
Yes, you have a point. However adding heat is often implicit when talking about melting stuff. However, if it requires 3400C, then the answer would probably include a comment about that.
Eggs are primarily comprised of colloidal suspension.
Colloids cannot melt, as they are not in a solid phase
Only the yolk.
But then you're melting carbon ash and not eggs.
Which raises an interesting question: what if you cooked it in a zero oxygen environment (say argon, nitrogen, or carbon dioxide... basically welding gases because they're mostly inert). I can't burn in that context, so does it melt? Or do you drive off all the volatiles and are just left with carbon anyway?
If you heat carbon based stuff without oxygen a process called pyrolysis happens. It separates the components into their molecules and molecules into smaller molecules with less weight. During this process you can gain different materials.
Not sure what kind of products are possible with the pyrolysis of egg + welding gases though lol
If you heat carbon in a vacuum (via radiation) you can get melted carbon!
If you heat carbon in a vacuum, it sublimates straight to gas. If you heat it under extreme pressure in an inert gas atmosphere, then it can melt. Unfortunately creating such pressures in the lab is only possible with diamond anvil presses, which are themselves carbon and thus tend to sublimate from the heat, resulting in pressure vessel failure. Doing the experiment on the surface of a neutron star would work, but presents some other difficulties.
Note to self: try this.
In an inert atmosphere under enough pressure pretty much anything can melt without burning.
This is the correct answer. In a vaccum wood won't burn for instance. It will melt, and even sublimate.
An egg is already liquid, so it can't be molten. It's the same way you can't melt water.