I know this sounds like a silly question but when a candle bought at Yankee Candle burns away, and the jar is empty, is there a waxy coating on the walls of my room? Would one eventually over the years, be able to notice the waxy coating in the room? Are we breathing in wax while the candles burning? I have a lot of questions just like a five-year-old LOL. Someone please help.
In: Chemistry
Candles create air movement around it. Because it’s hot, the air around it rises, and is replaced by cooler air below it which then gets hot and rises over and over. The soot of the candle wax is carried up and away until it just settles again. You’d probably see it as dust. It’s not waxy after it is burned. So if you’re cleaning that room, and wiping things down, you’ll get most of it.
The wax is burned as fuel. Modern candle wax is a fairly efficient fuel, leaving only fine dust-like ash. The wick is less efficient at burning, but it‘s function is to carry liquid wax to the flame.
As u/GenXCub said, you‘d see the residue in the area as dust. The wick may leave a smoldered carcass in the jar, but that‘s not what the spirit of the question is.
The same place wood goes, which is into the air. But unlike wood, when wax burns the vast majority of it turns into carbon dioxide and water vapor. Which is why you don’t need a chimney. If they burned perfectly there would be no soot at all, but carbon tends to clump around the fringes of the flame. Theres a great xkcd about this. Maybe a better redditor than me can find it.
Burning is actually a chemical reaction between the wax and the air. There’s lots of different materials that can burn but the vast majority of the ones we use are pretty much [this reaction](https://www.thoughtco.com/thmb/2uaaTWnUH6aQFr6GD_UmfDsBsuk=/1500×1000/filters:fill(auto,1)/methanecombustion-58e3e6005f9b58ef7e0daa10.jpg).
Hydrocarbons (molecules that are mostly carbon and hydrogen) react with molecules of oxygen to transform into heat and carbon dioxide (carbon and oxygen) and water (hydrogen and oxygen). Candle wax is made up of long chains of hydrocarbons which take the place of CH4 in the picture. Once the wax has been burned it doesn’t exist anymore as wax, it’s been broken down into CO2 and water vapor, just gasses in the air.
Did you just have a power outage too?
To explain like you’re 5, the wax turns into the energy and heat and light of the flame. You burned the wax- it’s not floating around the room sticking to your walls. You turned it into fire, into energy.
This is all good to know. I was raised not to burn candles much, because it would leave wax on the walls. I’m gonna use candles so much more now!
Go into the house of a person that burns a lot of candles and you can easily see that burning candles does absolutely leave a layer of soot on everything in the house, especially the ceiling above the candle where the hot air rises to. Candles burn pretty clean but burn enough and the whole area gets very gross.
Wax is made of big, sticky molecules made of lots of carbon and hydrogen atoms joined together fairly loosely. When heated in the flame, those molecules break apart into carbon and hydrogen. The carbon binds tightly to two oxygen atoms from the air to make carbon dioxide. The two hydrogen atoms bind tightly to an oxygen atom to make water. The process of these atoms snapping tightly together releases energy, in the form of heat, which produces the bright flame and breaks up more wax to release more carbon and hydrogen.
The carbon dioxide mixes with the air and is carried away, as does the water, adding a little more humidity to the air.
Wax is a hydrocarbon. It is comprised of molecules with a long, complex chain of hydrogen and carbon atoms.
Break apart those molecules, combine with oxygen, and you’re left with H2O (water, in the form of water vapor) plus CO2 (carbon dioxide). If the ratio of fuel to oxygen isn’t ideal, you end up with some CO (carbon monoxide) as well.
Water vapor, CO2, and CO are all gasses, so they all end up in the atmosphere.
Latest Answers