Why Does a Match Strike?
A match strikes because we make it warm by rubbing it on something. You know that you have to rub something rather rough, so there is a good deal of friction. The movement of the match is hindered by the rough thing you press it against, and that is what we mean by friction. This makes the match hot. Rub the tip of your finger on your coat, and you will soon make your finger hot.
Now, the whole thing about the match is that its head is made of a mixture of things to which nothing happens as long as they are kept ordinarily cool, but as soon as they are made hot enough they catch fire - that is to say, they combine with the oxygen of the air, and so burn.
Our business, then, is to get a kind of mixture that will stay on the end of a piece of wood, or some such thing, and will catch fire even when made only so hot as we can make it by rubbing. Over a hundred years ago the first friction match was made, and almost the best of these at first required a lot of friction, for it had to be drawn up between two pieces of sand-paper before it would catch fire. Then the curious element called phosphorus, which really means light- bearer, began to be used, and matches were made very much like those we use now. The special peculiarity of phosphorus is that it readily catches fire just as we want it to do, but a number of other things are put into the match head, and especially something which itself contains oxygen, and can supply it for purposes of burning even more readily than the oxygen of the air. That is why you get a little explosion when you strike some kinds of matches.
But of course there is a certain amount of danger in having anything about you that will catch fire readily. Thus, if you have ordinary matches (what we now call kitchen matches) loose in your pocket, they may get rubbed together accidentally and they may catch fire. Therefore, the question arose whether there could not be made some kind of match which could be struck quite readily, but of which we could be sure that it would strike only when we really meant it to strike.
This kind of match was invented more than fifty years ago. Generally they are called safety matches. The point about them is that there is no phosphorus in their heads; the phosphorus is put on the outside of the box instead, and so this kind of match is almost certain not to catch on fire except when it is purposely struck where the phosphorus is. Now, there are at least two different kinds of phosphorus, and the commonest and cheapest of these, white or yellow phosphorus, is a very deadly poison. It is, in fact, used in making a poison to kill rats and other animal and insect pests. One grain of it may easily kill a man. People have often been killed by swallowing match- heads. Further, this dangerous kind of phosphorus was used in the heads of ordinary matches, and the people who made those matches often suffered great damage from phosphorus-poisoning.
However, the Belgian Government once offered a big prize for a “strike-anywhere” match that would contain no poisonous phosphorus. Two Frenchmen succeeded in making one, and now these safe matches are commonly used. Special laws are now in force in many countries forbidding the use of the dangerous white phosphorus in the match industry.
