The flash point is defined as the minimum temperature at which a flammable liquid or volatile solid gives off sufficient vapor to form an ignitable mixture with air near the surface of the liquid or within a vessel (page 2-515, perry’s chemical engineers’ handbook, see footnote 1). for example, the flash point of n-octane at 1.0 atm is 13°c (55°f), which means that dropping a match into an open container of octane is likely to start a fire in a laboratory, but not outside on a cold winter day. (do not try it! one reference—l. bretherick, bretherick’s handbook of reactive chemical hazards, 4th edition, butterworths, london, 1990, p. 1596—points out there is "usually a fair [our emphasis] correlation between flash point and probability of involvement in fire.") suppose you are keeping two solvents in your laboratory, one with a flash point of 15°c and the other with a flash point of 75°c. how do these solvents differ from the standpoint of safety