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Lirdon t1_ja5znp3 wrote

Wood is not a basic element, its a lot of organic material made of carbon, and carbon, in general doesn’t melt, it sublimes. While metals have a melting point that is achievable, carbon melting point is like 3,5K degrees and before that it combusts and becomes smoke.

EDIT: I was corrected, there are carbon based organic compounds that melt, like plastics. But it so happens that compounds in wood do not. Just for clarification.

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tdscanuck t1_ja620w3 wrote

Have to be a little careful here...lots of carbon-based organic compounds melt. Like pretty much all plastics, fats, waxes, etc.

It just happens that the main compounds in wood (lignin, cellulose) are heavily cross-linked and undergo thermal decomposition into things that burn before they reach melting temperature under normal conditions.

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Lirdon t1_ja6298d wrote

You’re absolutely correct. My bad.

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cqpa t1_ja683vn wrote

I feel like we still haven't arrived at an "explain like I'm five" version yet, though?

So maybe something along the lines of... so there's a lot of important things that are different between wood and metals. As u/Lirdon said, metals are just raw elements (i.e. silver, nickel, etc.). The atoms in metals form a special type of bond with each other that's different from the bonds that we see in organic stuff like wood. The type of bonds formed by metals lends itself really well to going evenly from a solid into a melty liquid when you heat it.

Wood is a mix of many types of organic, non-metal compounds. The bonds that these atoms in these compounds form tend to be much, much stronger.

When non-metal stuff with those stronger types of bonds gets heated, sometimes it goes nicely from being a solid to a liquid (like the plastics and waxes that u/tdscanuck mentioned). But sometimessss things get real spicy instead. In the case of wood, the compounds completely break apart into ash, tar, and the CO2 gas. Metals don't really have the option to "break apart" into other things since the nickel, copper, etc. atoms are already in their most basic form.

Maybe? Hopefully the people who actually know chemistry can come fix this lol

Edit: apparently metals can also burn but there's a bunch of reasons when metals common forms we see them don't very often. https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2018/02/18/why-dont-metals-burn/

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