Why does a candle make no smoke when it is lit but makes a lot of smoke when you blow it out?
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Candles produce smoke even when burning. A yellow or red flame is relatively cool (for a flame), and will not completely burn all its fuel. You may have seen a blackened empty jar candle, this is soot that was produced by an incomplete burn. Search for “candle soot jar” if you’ve not seen this before. Jars will get this soot even if the candle was never extinguished.
A candle burning for 1 hour produces the equivalent amount of smoke as 1 cigarette.
As others have noted, the “smoke” you see when you extinguish a candle is not actually smoke, but wax vapor. You can even relight the candle by setting the vapor on fire. The flame will burn back to the wick and start releasing more vapor to keep the flame burning.
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