[electronpusher96]

    When heating an organic solvent which is insoluble in water, is a water bath supposed to be used?  It seems to me that if somehow flaming solvent ended up in the water, it would expel flaming solvent everywhere(Like if you pour water on a grease fire.), yet I can't find any mention of this in my lab books.  Wouldn't it be better to place a drop of soap in the water, or use oil?

[Arkcon]

It really depends on your experimental setup, but yes a water bath is best for gentle heating of anything -- from an organic reaction to a steak you're trying to cook sous vide.  How your gentle heating is going to ignite an organic reaction in a flask, and also cause it to spill over, is also lost on me.  Whether an organic is denser or not, hitting a large bulk of water is likely to extinguish it.  Pouring water onto a large mass of flaming organic will spread the fire, but a fine mist of water can even extinguish the most volatile oil fires, but admittedly, not the best for the lightest, most volatile organics, say gasoline.  http://www.bfpe.com/Water-Mist/

[electronpusher96]

It really depends on your experimental setup, but yes a water bath is best for gentle heating of anything -- from an organic reaction to a steak you're trying to cook sous vide.  How your gentle heating is going to ignite an organic reaction in a flask, and also cause it to spill over, is also lost on me.  Whether an organic is denser or not, hitting a large bulk of water is likely to extinguish it.  Pouring water onto a large mass of flaming organic will spread the fire, but a fine mist of water can even extinguish the most volatile oil fires, but admittedly, not the best for the lightest, most volatile organics, say gasoline.  http://www.bfpe.com/Water-Mist/

Well, I had in mind the flask cracking and spilling the hot liquid into the bath, where the vapors could potentially be ignited by the hotplate(granted still very unlikely.) 

I didn't know there were fire extinguishers like that, thanks for the link.