Say a doorless, windowless room is completely full of nitrogen gas. (This means the room is completely sealed) A match is lit inside the room, what happens.

I'll let you guys explain this one

burning (as I understand it) is an oxidation process, how is the match lit?**daver: thank you, I didn't realize that the matchhead would have enough oxygen in it.

The match would go out due to lack of oxygen.

Whoever intended to light the match asphyxiated before he/she got the chance.

would the match light with no oxygen to burn?

I'd like to register my personal disapproval of this kind of question. Things that have definitive, factual answers are not surveys, IMHO. If you need a forum for this sort of thing, may I suggest Elbows?

The match never lights.

Too many years since college chemistry, but I believe nitrogen in a noncombustible gas...I am concerned about the individual who 'attempted' to light the match (I don't think it would light without oxygen). He'd better get somewhere with oxygen real fast.

questions that have definitive, factual answers. Hmmmm....does that mean some of us might learn something (god forbid!)other than what foreign object is used while masturbating?

You're all wrong. There's no match in the room. It's completely full of nitrogen.

Nothing, I think? Doesn't everything need oxygen to combust?

The match won't light if there's no oxygen.

If the room is completely filled with H2, it would be the same as with N2, (H2 needs O2 to burn, too) if it were filled with O2, the match would burn away *very* quickly, probably before you could drop the match, and it would burn *very* hot. The combustion would stop there, unless your fingers caught on fire before you had a chance to drop the match.

I believe N2 is inert. Hunter: did you also disapprove of the astronaut-on-the-moon survey? I kind of liked that one. But yeah, I'm not gonna start posting questions about Clebsch-gordon coefficients or Schwinger Algebra

the match doesn't light, and the person attempting to light it dies of suffocation. oxygen needed for both processes.

Completely filled would mean no oxygen. How would you light the match with out oxygen? What would feed the fire? ***Daver: damn your logic!

who lit the match? was it Tuesday? is this a rerun of 911?

Editing this to avoid it getting too damned long...
[...] The match is not lit[...] ***Later [...] hadn't thought about the oxygen-in-the-match aspect.[...]
I don't mind questions like this...[...]
lisashea: Granted, this survey in particular isn't too illuminating. OTOH, the moon-gravity survey of the same type "MEANT" something about how well people understand the physics of falling bodies, which interests me at least as much as their weight, hair color, preference in superpowers, etc. Presumably, had the author asked "Do you correctly understand how falling objects operate on the moon?" (yes, no, etc.) or "How well do you understand physics?" (pretty well, not at all, etc.) nobody would have objected, right? Same basic information being gotten at, only the style is different.
As for threatening -- if you don't feel threatened by the possibility of appearing ignorant or foolish to others, then it can't. I suspect that doesn't describe everyone here, least of all me... I definitely get a flash of "gee, what if I'm saying something dumb?" anxiety when I post here.

*** lisashea the survey may be meaningless to you so then set your opinion at bad and move on, personally I do not like political surveys but I am not going to harp on each on that it is meaningless to me. I also think that on this survey we have had some interesting answers to what appears to be an obvious question.

The match goes out. Whoever lit it suffocates. GEEZ, guys!

Nothing happens... but it can't be said to have not happened until the room is unsealed at the end of the experiment.

OK, I bow to Daver, who I had the foolishness to doubt before, for proving that there *is* enough oxygen in the match head to get it to light. Then it goes out, which we all knew. We were all fighting over the wording of the question and not the answer!! Which is why ...

***Hunter: I have to agree. I like trivia kinds of questions where there's a "do you know x, y, z, a, b, c and *why* do you know these things" but this is just one silly and improbable question :) "Do penguins live at the North Pole"? "If a plane crashes on the border between the US and Canada, where do you bury the survivors"? I don't want to wade through trillions of these kinds of surveys.

Emily: I think the point was that (here, I'll be specific) *I* like to learn about each other's opinions here, not find out who doesn't know some specific fact ... there are tons of "fact of the day" sites! Fact-finding is neat in the context of "what does it mean" (like in my political survey, for example) but this particular survey here has NO context. It's not a matter of being threatened, dpolicar. How could a survey here possibly threaten me?? If I know it I do, if I don't, I don't. But what does it MEAN if I don't? Nothing at all. It means either I never learned it or I forgot it. I don't like meaningless surveys, they take my time up for really no gain :)

Doom: I didn't harp on the feathers survey :) I'm just pointing out that if we start getting six quizzes a day it's going to make SurveyCentral a QuizStation, which I don't like, rather than an OpinionStation, which I do enjoy greatly :) If there was one a week, I could care less! Two a day is a bit much.

Phi: You are TOO funny :) :)

The match lights, much as usual, and then immediately goes out as the head is consumed. There is sufficient oxygen in a match-head to burn in a nitrogen atmosphere but the rest of the match (the wood or paper piece) will not burn.
Did you know? Titanium will continue to "burn" in a pure nitrogen atmosphere if it is heated hot enough to ignite.
**hunter: Elbows?
**lisashea: There is an oxidizer in the match head, usually a chlorate or perchlorate compound. This will decompose in the presence of heat (such as from the friction of striking the match) and provide oxygen for burning the phosphorus and sulphur. I'm going to have to try this tonight and see. I'll report back.

OK...one extremely scientific experiment later (using a fermenter¹, a tank of CO₂, some saran wrap, tape, matches and a long stick) I can say that matches will ignite in the absence of O₂.
Two caveats:
I used CO₂ instead of N₂, but if I can produce enough frictional heat to decompose CO₂, I'm a lot stronger than I thought.
There was undoubtedly some O₂ left in the fermenter. I'd estimate about 1-2%.
The matches took more force than usual to ignite and they went out as soon as the head was consumed. Wow, I'm such a geek...
¹ The fermenter was empty. No beer was harmed during the course of this experiment.

Actually, if a room in *completely* full of nitrogen then a match couldn't *be* in it, since a match is not nitrogen.

nitrogen is boring. ...a more interesting question might have been a room full of oxygen or hydrogen. I think that would go boom, but perhaps not...

***Daver, I'm really impressed with your usage of _sub and ^super scripts!

jcdino: *rofl*

you need oxygen if you want the heat to start a chemical reaction