Hello, welcome along, Explorer. My name's Dan. You and me, we're travelling around the universe,

and it's all about your questions in a brand new science quest. If you have anything science-y that

you want answered on this show, well, you need to send it over to me. Really easy to do it.

Best way, as a voice note on the free FunKidsUp and at FunKidsLife.com.

And that way, I can do all the digging for you.

I can look everything up.

I can research the whole universe.

And we'll see what we can do.

We'll sort things out.

First question this week from Griffin.

Hi, Dan. this is Griffin. Love your show. I've got a question for you. Why do some materials burn and not others? Thanks.

Why do some materials not burn? Well, fire needs three things to burn, really. You need fuel,

oxygen and heat. Well, most things have a fuel because they are fuel, aren't they? Things can be

eaten, they can be consumed by a flame. So that's the fuel sorted. It's the other two things that get in the way of some

materials failing to ignite. You see, some objects, some materials like glass or sand or gold,

their atoms are too stable. So the oxygen can't break down. It can't get away. It can't break free

so it can burn. Not like wood, which is made of molecules where the oxygen really easily breaks down when it's heated. So it falls down there, that's why some materials don't burn. Also, a material needs to get hot enough. Some things like steel, well, that needs to reach 1,500 degrees

Celsius to break down and be burned. It's so hard for it to get that hot when you think of,

like wood, wood needs to get to a few hundred degrees Celsius. So it's much higher, and it's really

hard for the flame to sustain

and keep at that heat. Another problem with steel and metals is that they conduct heat too well.

They spread the energy from one particle to another too easily and that disperses it so it won't get

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