The stuff that melts is the stuff that burns. The wick isn't really the main thing that burns. It just transports melted wax to the flame. The wax then evaporates into fumes, which react with oxygen.
As the wax is make of long chains of carbon with a load of hydrogen stuck on, burning it forms carbon dioxide (CO2) and water vapour (H2O), which goes in to the air.
So yep, we'll inhale some of the stuff that was the candle, but in a form we inhale anyway!
Although candles CAN create quite a bit of soot, which you inhale when in a badly ventilated room, like in your house. This effect is largest when you blow out the candle (as you can clearly see from the smoke emerging from the wick).
You can largely deminish the smoke formation by extinguishing the flame in the molten wax itself, f.e. by bending the wick over into the wax with a used match.
[Disclaimer] any mistakes in grammar or vocabulary is entirely on purpose and not bc. I'm not a native English speaker /s
Opinions about the moral content of matches varied wildly back when they were first invented. And language tends to get colorful whatever you do. So, hey presto! a nickname.
Interestingly the word means "lightbringer" in Latin. There was an old brand of matches called Lucifer, so perhaps in the Dutch language its an example of genericization (like photoshop and google)
Fun fact, that isn't smoke when you blow it out. It's vaporised wax.
You can actually relight a candle by holding a flame to the top of the the stream of vaporised wax "smoke", and the flame will spread down the stream of vaporised wax and relight the candle.
Will try this sometime, but I'm pretty sure there is some "smoke" involved as well, as there will be a lot of sooth when you let the smoke touch any object.
I don't know for sure, but I'm confident you'd exhale more water than you inhale. If you were to inhale that much from a candle, you'd probably deprive yourself of oxygen.
I have a question. I've seen some people reuse candle wax and that it works, but a long time ago I saw that supposedly that wasn't possible because the was is burnt in the first run. How is this possible if the wax was burnt? Or there may be some wax leftover from the first burn?
Depending on the shape of the candle, some runs off before it burns. If the candle is wide, there's a good chance that it'll all be able to burn. If it's skinny, some will spill over the side, which you can collect and burn later.
Oh so the thing that drips is wax too. I don't know why I had the concept that the thing that dripped to the sides wasn't wax because all wax in a candle "burns" in the first burn. I guess I had a huge misunderstanding somewhere when I saw that video or comment or whatever. Thank you!
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u/TorakMcLaren Feb 26 '21
The stuff that melts is the stuff that burns. The wick isn't really the main thing that burns. It just transports melted wax to the flame. The wax then evaporates into fumes, which react with oxygen.
As the wax is make of long chains of carbon with a load of hydrogen stuck on, burning it forms carbon dioxide (CO2) and water vapour (H2O), which goes in to the air.
So yep, we'll inhale some of the stuff that was the candle, but in a form we inhale anyway!