Can I light a matchstick with electricity?

Question

I'm talking about connecting a wire to the tip of the match, and then close the circuit to batteries. I'm wondering how much voltage is required to light the match.

Answer 1

One piece of 1.5 volts battery is good enough. But you must use steel wire  thicker than a hair. Make a few small turns in the middle of wire (24 inches total wire length) to react as a heater element. If you choose copper wire,it shall melt down in a few seconds.

Answer 2

What you're describing is an electric blasting cap.  Probably the best you can improvise is a few turns of magnesium wire around the match head, similar to what you would find in an old-fashioned single-use flash bulb.

Answer 3

The above heater based solution is right.

But possibly you meant how much voltage is needed to make a spark to light the match. In this case the sparking voltage is decided by many factors so your question is very hard.

Some factors include the size of the spark gap, air quality and humidity and the shape of the wire ends. Very very roughly for thin wire with a gap of about 2mm (about 1/12 of an inch) in dry air the static sparking voltage is about 1000V.

The type and dryness of the match and whether the spark is repeated would also affect the match's lighting chance.