I was wondering why a lightning bolt is coined as "plasma", or a "spark" from an electrical wire/device is as well, yet flares, molten lava, and burning buildings are not(flares are pyrotechnic, exothermic, and very much like flames).
I hear arguments saying that plasma is ionized gas, but how can a flare not be ionized at such high temperature(and why isn't ionized, very hot flames considered plasma)?
This guy, the top answerer, says that fire is not plasma because it's not ionized:
Also, some lava exceeds 3,000 Fahreheit. How is that not plasma, and what draws the fine line between plasma and fire itself(not as a state of matter, but as a relation with gas)?
Fire is gas, but some say it's plasma if you can see it (check the link the poster added below in the first comment), so when does it become a full-on plasma if it's not normally one?
Best Answer
The key concept to defining plasma is the Debye distance/length/radius. If the particles are so close the Debye distance plays little or no role in particle interaction, than it is not a plasma. This Debye distance depends on the charge of the particles, so if their is no charge...
Though temperatures like 3,000 Fahrenheit would force a separation between particles of a gas to distances on the order of the Debye, for a solid, like lava, this is not the case. Fire is a very small presence of plasma under the pressure of 100 kPa, so it does not exist much for long, if at all.