Burning Questions About a Candle: Continued

Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment

After you feel like you have made enough observations to give you a pretty good understanding of what is actually happening during the burning process, it is time to do an experiment. An experiment results when you ask a question and then develop a method to answer that question. The experiment itself is actually the process of getting the answer.

So, here is what you need to do:

Be creative - you should be able to design experiments that you can do with what you can find in the lab or that you can easily acquire with very little effort. For example, holding a piece of glass over the candle as it burns (probably at an angle would work better) can help you answer questions about what is evolved or given off during the combustion process. Think of other simple ways of investigating further what is going on and see what kind of good experiments you can come up with.

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References

A Burning Candle: An Experiment in Observation
From the Macrogalleria

Candle Flames
From NASA's Microgravity: A Teacher's Guide with Activities, Secondary Level

Burning Questions about a Candle
written by Lon Mathias, from http://pslc.ws/pslcweb/activity/candle/candle3.htm

Michael Faraday (1791-1867): The Chemical History of A Candle, 1860
From the Internet Modern History Sourcebook

Also, check out these references that discuss classic candle experiments:

Other articles that might be of interest:


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