Factopus

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LESSON 2 · Reactions All Around You

PAUSE TO THINK

Why does steel wool catch fire from a 9-volt battery when a solid nail won't?

Its enormous surface area

Shredding iron into hair-thin fibers exposes a huge amount of metal to oxygen at once. The same iron-plus-oxygen reaction that creeps along as rust on a nail runs fast enough in steel wool to glow and flame.

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