You are a fireman and you throw a lighted match into gasoline? What exactly are you trying to demonstrate.
It’s a small beaker with a little bit of gasoline in the bottom. The beaker has a wide top so it is not explosive, like a gun barrel would be. By the way we also do a demonstration with a drop of gasoline in a plexiglass tube where we turn the lights off and light it on one end. It’s a cool light show. Comes from an old “Chemistry of Fire” program.
Sorry, I digressed and neglected to answer your question directly in the last post.
We have two beakers one with gasoline the other with kerosene. I first light a match and ask the kids what will happen when I drop it into the kerosene. Typically they expect it to light. The kerosene at room temperature actually douses the flame. Then I do the same thing with gasoline with a different result in that the vapors light up with the match. Then we put the beaker of kerosene above a burner and bring the temperature of the liquid up to it’s autoignition point somewhere around 200 degrees, drop the lit match in and this time there is fire. What we are demonstrating is the differences in ignition points and autoignition points in hydrocarbons.
The bottom line I’m trying to impress upon the kids is that gasoline is extremely dangerous and volatile at room temperature and actually at just about any natural environmental temperature. Kerosene which is similar to diesel is much safer.
The reason for these demo’s is fire safety. A lot of kids get burned every year using gasoline to torch things. I’m showing them how unpredictable, volatile and dangerous gasoline is. Of course I also show a couple videos and pictures of what happens to burn victims.
FYI: This is something we do with the 8th grade program not the elementary kids. They get a puppet show.