Why ether evaporate

In the following demonstration, a pile of cotton balls is placed at one end of a metal trough, with a lit candle at the other end. A small amount of diethyl ether is then poured onto the cotton balls. Some of the ether evaporates, and the vapor drifts down to the candle.

The candle ignites the ether fumes, and the entire trail of ether vapor leading back to the cotton balls is lit, and the cotton balls themselves catch on fire. If the cotton balls are placed in a metal scoop, they can be simply lifted out, and dumped into a sink where the fire can be extinguished by smothering it with wet rags.

Ether, as can be seen here, is extremely flammable — if you look at this stuff the wrong way, it'll catch on fire. Okay, that's a little bit of an exaggeration. NEVER use water to put out an ether fire; the burning ether will simply float on top of water, causing the fire to be spread over a larger area.

Ether fires should be smothered with a damp cloth, sand, or some other appropriate smothering agent. Ether fumes are also an anesthetic; prolonged exposure can cause drowsiness. Of course the physical action of boiling also allows for more rapid evaporation, so long as sufficient heat is applied to keep up with the evaporative cooling. Summary, TL;DR: As the ether was close to it's boiling point, it was evaporating rapidly, resulting in rapid mass loss.

The evaporative cooling near the boiling point happens at a rate to greater than the conductive heat transfer from the surrounding air, so that it never quite reaches it's boiling point, and actually cools to several degrees below it's boiling point.

Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Asked 4 years, 5 months ago. Active 2 years ago. Viewed 5k times. Question: Why do we not see ether "boiling" near its boiling point? Is my reasoning right, or is it flawed? Please do tell. Improve this question.

Eashaan Godbole Eashaan Godbole 1, 8 8 silver badges 25 25 bronze badges. You break an ether bottle at that temperature, and huge amounts of it will have evaporated when, almost inevitably, the fumes have found an ignition source.

In a cool lab, you get scorched a bit, OK. No fume hood window will save you. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. Sign up using Facebook. Sign up using Email and Password. Post as a guest Name. Email Required, but never shown. Featured on Meta. Now live: A fully responsive profile.