You can melt anything. An egg will burn first. Then you will get some type of rendered carbon ash. Which will, eventually, melt and/or vaporize with enough heat.
Which raises an interesting question: what if you cooked it in a zero oxygen environment (say argon, nitrogen, or carbon dioxide… basically welding gases because they're mostly inert). I can't burn in that context, so does it melt? Or do you drive off all the volatiles and are just left with carbon anyway?
If you heat carbon based stuff without oxygen a process called pyrolysis happens. It separates the components into their molecules and molecules into smaller molecules with less weight. During this process you can gain different materials.
Not sure what kind of products are possible with the pyrolysis of egg + welding gases though lol
If you heat carbon in a vacuum (via radiation) you can get melted carbon!
If you heat carbon in a vacuum, it sublimates straight to gas. If you heat it under extreme pressure in an inert gas atmosphere, then it can melt. Unfortunately creating such pressures in the lab is only possible with diamond anvil presses, which are themselves carbon and thus tend to sublimate from the heat, resulting in pressure vessel failure. Doing the experiment on the surface of a neutron star would work, but presents some other difficulties.
Well, for eggs, that are carbon based, you will in fact have problems since carbon doesn't have a liquid state at regular atmospheric pressure. I guess you can add pressure, but is that really what we mean when asking a question if something melt?
Melting is a physical process that changes the form and aggregation state of a thing, but it still remains that thing. Melted gold is still gold, for example.
Burning on the other hand is a chemical process that leads to new “things”. The egg isn’t longer an egg.
You can melt anything. An egg will burn first. Then you will get some type of rendered carbon ash. Which will, eventually, melt and/or vaporize with enough heat.
I would argue that it's no longer 'egg' once it's carbon ash and therefore never melted before it's existence ended.
Eggs are primarily comprised of colloidal suspension.
Colloids cannot melt, as they are not in a solid phase
Which raises an interesting question: what if you cooked it in a zero oxygen environment (say argon, nitrogen, or carbon dioxide… basically welding gases because they're mostly inert). I can't burn in that context, so does it melt? Or do you drive off all the volatiles and are just left with carbon anyway?
Note to self: try this.
If you heat carbon based stuff without oxygen a process called pyrolysis happens. It separates the components into their molecules and molecules into smaller molecules with less weight. During this process you can gain different materials.
Not sure what kind of products are possible with the pyrolysis of egg + welding gases though lol
If you heat carbon in a vacuum (via radiation) you can get melted carbon!
If you heat carbon in a vacuum, it sublimates straight to gas. If you heat it under extreme pressure in an inert gas atmosphere, then it can melt. Unfortunately creating such pressures in the lab is only possible with diamond anvil presses, which are themselves carbon and thus tend to sublimate from the heat, resulting in pressure vessel failure. Doing the experiment on the surface of a neutron star would work, but presents some other difficulties.
But then you're melting carbon ash and not eggs.
Well, for eggs, that are carbon based, you will in fact have problems since carbon doesn't have a liquid state at regular atmospheric pressure. I guess you can add pressure, but is that really what we mean when asking a question if something melt?
In an inert atmosphere under enough pressure pretty much anything can melt without burning.
An egg is already liquid, so it can't be molten. It's the same way you can't melt water.
Melting is a physical process that changes the form and aggregation state of a thing, but it still remains that thing. Melted gold is still gold, for example.
Burning on the other hand is a chemical process that leads to new “things”. The egg isn’t longer an egg.