Burning money

Hi all, have you tried to burn something but the item still exist.

Try this, you can use money notes (but not the Singapore new plastic note) for this experiment as it withstand heat better. Make 70% ethanol, dip your notes in the ethanol for a while, then light a fire to burn it. You can add some salt to make the flame more orangey instead of the blue flame which is not so visible.

Quickly give it a shake to extinguish the flame. You will notice the notes is perfectly fine. This is because the fire use the ethanol to burn, once the ethanol is used up, the fire will extinguish. 70% ethanol contain water so the water will be absorbed by the note (that why can't use plastic note) and the heat from the flame will be absorbed by the water instead of passing it to the note. Therefore the note will never be burnt. Unless you keep on holding the note under the flame as once all the water evaporate and the ethanol is used up, the flame will burnt the paper.

You can try dipping different item that absorb water into the ethanol but never try on flammable item. Enjoy the video that I shoot for this experiment.