Ice on Fire

I recently got a new camera (Canon PowerShot) so that I could take photos for About Chemistry in situations where stock photography doesn’t suffice. It’s a great camera and I love it, but this photo of a flaming ice cube actually was taken with my Verizon cell phone. This picture isn’t as pretty as some of the others I took for my flaming ice tutorial, but it shows a couple of things those photos don’t: (1) This is very obviously a real ice cube that is surrounded by fire. In this case, the flames are from some rubbing alcohol that I poured on the cube. You maybe can see that the ice itself isn’t burning; the fuel around it is. (2) If you use rubbing alcohol or ethanol, the water from the melting ice won’t put out your flame. This ice cube melted into oblivion before the flame was extinguished.