Candle Experiment

Experiment carried out by: Emily Kealy, Amethyst Albro and Jessica Gibson

Drawing Out the Idea

Materials needed

2 glasses that are the exact same

1 candle

1 needle

1 lighter

1 knife

Forming a Question

We wanted to know why a candle would have a see-saw effect when lit on both ends.

Carry out the Study

On 2/15/10 we figured out what type of candle works with our experiment.  The candle needs to be balanced on both ends.  We tryed lighting one end of the candle then tapping the other end when lighting it.  The candle did as expected and teetered just like the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u7OwGkWqrk

Then we tryed just burning one side to see if the candle would still teeter.  As soon as we lit the candle it started to move by itself. We started thinking that the candle would eventually flip completely around on its own.  We let it burn for 2 minutes and it never did a complete turn but stood straight up instead.

Next we tryed lighting each side without taping one end to make it go.  Once we lit both sides the teetering began but it wasn't until 1 minute that it began to teeter fastly.  Around 1 minute and 30 seconds it was almost standing up.  We thought it would start to flip but it did not and slowed down around 3 minutes.

To figure out why the candle acted in this matter we decided to measure the mass lost when teetering.  The mass lost was 0.1 gram (approximately 2 drops of wax) to get the candle moving. 

Articulating the Expectation

We found out that the reason for the see-saw effect was because of Newtons third law.  "For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction."  When the wax drops off each side it is lossing a slight amount of mass from each side propeling it to a slight kick back / see - saw move. We can also lokk at it as when wax drops off it creates a slight recoil reaction, similar to when someone jumps off a see-saw.

After Thoughts/ Little Experiment:

We had an idea about the candle becoming a boat after buring for a longer period of time.  We decided to test that and see how long it took to burn into that shape.  After approximately 8 minutes the candle stopped moving.  No boat was made. It just fell apart. This was becasue as each side burned more and more, the candle became shorter and shorter. This caused it to loose so much mass that it did not have enough weight on either end to propel it to move, therefore causing it to completely stop.