No, carbon (which is the main thing wood is made of) likes to react with oxygen. When you add energy to the wood (say, by heating it) this reaction will occur (which we see as burning, and the wood turning to charcoal) long before the wood reaches the point at which it would melt.
On the other hand, other things, such as cheese, don’t react well with oxygen, but have a low melting point. So as we heat them they melt long before they burst into flames!
1. Cover and soak in water
2. Chuck it in freezer
3. Put it out in sun
4. Ahh, my log is melting- u jelly?
Seriously though- what about if you had a really, really hot source? i.e. Carbons melting point- google suggest that it is about 3500 deg. In these conditions (maybe with some pressure?) would it be technically be possible to melt a log?
ooh good points adadw and ken! For anything to burn it needs a fuel (for example oxygen) and energy, so it you deprived it of that fuel, put it in a vacuum maybe, that would mean you could heat it without burning, and so get it to its melting point.
I had a quick google but couldn’t find any videos of this, but it sounds possible to me…
I’m not so sure… I think that before you melt the wood itself (which is mainly cellulose) you’d have reactions of the wood with itself, forming ever more complicated clusters + macromolecules of carbon.
I think you’d probably also chemically drive the water (both loose in the wood & bound up in carbohydrates) out of the cellulose and end up with some horrific coal-like blackened mass that just gets ever more cross linked.
Of course, you will eventually decompose the atoms as you heat, but you may jump directly to a gas (i.e. it will sublime), or even a plasma.