Warning: this experiment involves flammable materials and smoke. 
This should be done outside or in a fume hood with basic fire safety rules.
Greetings fellow nerds.
So let's do some really basic chemistry again. 
I have here some steel wool. 
 It doesn't look like it, but it's actually quite reactive with air. 
 To see this, first fluff it up a bit to give it more air between the voids. 
 Now simply set it on fire. 
As you can see you get this nice light show of burning iron. 
What's happening is the iron is reacting with the air to form iron oxide.
This happens with almost all iron 
 but steel wool is more spectacular because the small strands
 and high surface area let it heat up to the point that reaction is self-sustaining
 and burns through the wool.
Let's try that again.
Be careful when doing this as the wool will throw off sparks that might set nearby things on fire.
You have to fluff it up a bit, 
 because if you use compacted steel wool the air can't get in and oxidize the iron.
Now I'm going to go a step further and use  the potassium chlorate 
 we made from bleach in a previous video. 
 Mixing equal masses of iron to potassium chlorate will produce a very vigorous reaction 
since we're providing oxygen directly in a more concentrated form.
And that was burning steel wool.
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