Explanation: Flame tests use ionic compounds, which contain a metal cation and a nonmetal anion. The color of a flame test is due to electrons in the metal cations becoming excited and jumping up to a higher energy level. This is unstable, so the electrons immediately return to their ground state.

Flame colors are produced from the movement of the electrons in the metal ions present in the compounds. For example, a sodium ion in an unexcited state has the electron configuration 1s22s22p6.

The flame test is used to visually determine the identity of an unknown metal or metalloid ion based on the characteristic color the salt turns the flame of a bunsen burner. The heat of the flame converts the metal ions into atoms which become excited and emit visible light.

The flame test is a qualitative test used in chemistry to help determine the identity or possible identity of a metal or metalloid ion found in an ionic compound. If the compound is placed in the flame of a gas burner, there may be a characteristic color given off that is visible to the naked eye.

Because each element has an exactly defined line emission spectrum, scientists are able to identify them by the color of flame they produce. For example, copper produces a blue flame, lithium and strontium a red flame, calcium an orange flame, sodium a yellow flame, and barium a green flame.

light lilac

Red-violet

Flame colorants

white-blue

Blue flames have more oxygen and get hotter because gases burn hotter than organic materials, such as wood. For example, the element lithium will produce a pink flame, while the element tungsten will produce a green flame.

Purple flames come from metal salts, such as potassium and rubidium. Purple is unusual because it’s not a color of the spectrum. Purple and magenta result from a mixture of blue light and red light. For this project, the fire color comes from the emission spectra of safe chemicals.

Which type of fire is hotter, blue or purple? – Quora. As things heat up and combustion becomes more complete, flames turn from red to orange, yellow and blue. And purple color is combination of red & blue color it means that blue fire is more hotter than purple fire.

For real: If you shine a low-pressure sodium lamp on a yellow sodium flame, the flame will be black. Flames emits light and heat, so it seems impossible to make black fire. However, you actually can make black fire by controlling the wavelengths of absorbed and emitted light.

Potassium salts produce a characteristic purple or violet color in a flame.

Table of Flame Test Colors

Near the logs, where most burning is occurring, the fire is white, the hottest color possible for organic material in general, or yellow. Above the yellow region, the color changes to orange, which is cooler, then red, which is cooler still.

The colder part of a diffusion (incomplete combustion) flame will be red, transitioning to orange, yellow, and white as the temperature increases as evidenced by changes in the black-body radiation spectrum. For a given flame’s region, the closer to white on this scale, the hotter that section of the flame is.

You get a blue gas flame with a hydrocarbon gas when you have enough oxygen for complete combustion. When you do have sufficient oxygen, the gas flame appears blue because complete combustion creates enough energy to excite and ionize the gas molecules in the flame.