Flames shoot out from the top of the beaker.
Calcium carbide reacts with water to form acetylene. This is the opposite of the disproportionation that chlorine gas undergoes under basic conditions, so the reaction has been referred to as a conproportionation . This reaction is not what one might first expect, since it is not the product of the addition of the halogen across the carbon-carbon triple bond. The product is formed by the abstraction of hydrogen from the hydrocarbon.