"Where does a candle go when it burns?"

[pesco]

Originally published at: "Where does a candle go when it burns?" | Boing Boing

…

[Supercrisp]

Faraday’s got you covered: http://engineerguy.com/faraday/pdf/faraday-chemical-history-complete.pdf

[Knackfloh]

If that were true a burning candle wouldn’t smell like way and other things. OK tiny amounts probably but still …

edit: wax not way.

[fuzzyfungus]

This sounds like a slightly idealized candle. Some of the less well behaved ones put out a lot more soot than a naive look at a chemical equation for hydrocarbon combustion would suggest.

And, of course, the ones with wire-core wicks are good for delicious zinc (if relatively new) which is only bad-ish for you; or succulent lead; which is just plain nasty stuff.

[Professor59]

CO2 and water? Great.

So I’ll pretend not to notice that black smear on the ceiling above the candle.

[Papasan]

Candle In The Wind (Remastered 2014)

[AnthonyC]

Exactly. There are lots of oxidation reactions that can happen when you mix complex combinations of organic molecules with oxygen and heat, and it is a basic principle of chemistry that all of them happen, just at (in some cases wildly) different rates. A burning scented candle also vaporizes essential oils without oxidizing them (much), burns the wick as well as the wax, makes soot and smoke, and so on.

[tabularasa]

And where does all that gas in the tank go when I drive around?

[Sludge]

It goes to Jen Psaki because, ooh, another burn!

[13enster]

Anyone who has ever played with a Bunsen burner knows that a yellow flame means that your hydrocarbon fuel is not getting completely combusted. The yellow color is indicative of elemental carbon (i.e. soot) and is not the sort of thing that is conducive to optimal lung performance if inhaled. The smallest particles of soot can even exchange through your lungs into your bloodstream.

Symptoms of long term overexposure include: atrocious fake Cockney accents, vivid chalk art hallucinations, and singing, umbrella-wielding, sympathetic-magic-practicing, imaginary friends.

[Jim_Campbell]

reminds me of this conversation about the weight of smoke from the movie Smoke

Smoke (1/12) Movie CLIP - The Weight of Smoke (1995) HD

[hecep]

They all eventually go to Heaven. Angels love candles.

[ejeffrey]

@fuzzyfungus

This sounds like a slightly idealized candle. Some of the less well behaved ones put out a lot more soot than a naive look at a chemical equation for hydrocarbon combustion would suggest.

@13enster

Anyone who has ever played with a Bunsen burner knows that a yellow flame means that your hydrocarbon fuel is not getting completely combusted. The yellow color is indicative of elemental carbon (i.e. soot) and is not the sort of thing that is conducive to optimal lung performance if inhaled. The smallest particles of soot can even exchange through your lungs into your bloodstream.

The linked article has all that covered:

If candles burned completely, every molecule from the wax would end up combining with oxygen to become CO₂ or water vapor, but candles don’t burn perfectly. Around the edges of the flame, clumps of carbon molecules — maybe 0.1 percent of the mass of the candle — are flung away before they finish burning, sort of like bits of food sprayed out by a kitchen mixer. These particles contribute to smoke and soot.

Aneta Wierzbicka, a scientist at Lund University in Sweden who studies indoor air pollution, has conducted a number of experiments to measure particle emissions from candle flames. “Candles, in homes without tobacco smoking, are among the most powerful indoor sources of particles, followed by cooking,” she told me.
…
if people burn a lot of candles on a daily basis, it’s worth taking steps to minimize exposure to airborne particles. She suggests making sure the room is well-ventilated, and using clean, white candles without too many additives or ingredients, since everything in the candle ends up in the air.

[Chaz]

So if I get a candle as a gift for the holidays, and re-gift that candle to someone else, and they burn it, a year later, I just get that candle again?

[Flossaluzitarin]

Or; it’s spring, why does anybody still have three candles cranking away? And at 7-9 candles even to romanticize a bath, should I also call it huffing and a respiratory health risk to juvenile animals? What about putting essential wormwood oil on GPUs? How do I get my candle to just make graphene already, it’s the future?

I’m pretty sure that no matter how many candles burn, there’s one fattest candle that just gets fatter.

[Mark_Sniadecki]

I’ll often burn a single unscented tealight in my studio while I’m working on things, and never notice any smell at all until it finally burns itself out.

More concerning to me are those mornings I wake up to air that reeks of the asphalt plant up the river. I wonder how long those particles take to travel around the Earth…

[da_Bird]

“Carbon dioxide, you say? JOE BIDEN WANTS TO BAN BIRTHDAY CANDLES!!!”

[Brainspore]

@Knackfloh

If that were true a burning candle wouldn’t smell like way and other things.

It takes an incredibly tiny proportion of any given object’s mass to produce a detectable smell. Otherwise you’d be able to watch the numbers on the scale go down every time you farted. So as long as the wax is less than 100% pure or the chemical reaction is less than 100% efficient you will be able to smell some residual wax vapor along with the carbon dioxide and water vapor.

[Jesse13927]

The answer to this question is the same as the answer to “What are hotdogs made of?”