THE CHEMICAL HISTORY OF A CANDLE

[Reedtb2@cs.com]

Dear Firebugs:

Emerson said that everything is made of the same secret stuff.  I take this 
to mean that the principles are all the same, the applications hide the 
principles so we have to be clever to find them. 

There was a wildly popular set of Christmas Lectures at the Royal Society in 
London, ostensibly for children, but parents fought for seats. 

One of the most popular lectures was "The Chemical History of a Candle" given 
by Michael Faraday and published as a book in 1861.  I had a copy which I 
lost many years ago.  I came across it in paperback at Amazon.com and have 
been re-reading it.  

If I want to teach anyone about combustion, I start with the candle - so 
familiar, and yet so little understood.  I doubt if anyone yet has an exact 
model of combustion in the candle, but it is easy to understand qualitatively 
all the pieces involved in such a model.  

I highly recommend this entertaining book to anyone interested in any aspect 
of combustion. 

Yours truly,            TOM REED                BEF PREDD
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