system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Does the temperature of water affect its ability to put out a fire?
gpt
To an extent yes. In a practical sense no. Fire is a self sustaining reaction meaning that it creates enough energy to keep itself on fire. The idea behind using water to put it out (in something like a house fire when it isn’t practical to smother it) is that the energy that is sustaining the reaction is instead utilized to heat and then vaporize the water. That means energy goes into creating steam rather than creating more fire. So in this instance it would take more energy to turn cold water into steam than hot water but phase change to steam (also known as the latent heat of vaporization) is actually the most energy intensive step in the process.