A huge fire is truly incessant, but gazing a candle is really peaceful. It does triggers a curiosity about what is actually going on in there. Putting intuitives beside, a simple process takes place in the burning of a candle.
On observing closely, some part of the small fire lit up on a candle is yellow, else the remaining part is blue. Blue flame is not just hotter than the yellow one, it causes the yellow flame to take place.
In fact, they have separate physiological processes.
1. The Blue Part
Atoms vibrate in a flame really fast. The more the vibration of atoms in an object, the more heated that object will be. The part of the candle to be lit with a lighter is initially cooler as it's receiving less vibration from its atoms.
After the candle is lit, it starts to vapourize. The vapourized particles escape as gas. As soon as they cover a very short distance, they collide with oxygen molecules. On reacting with each other, they produce heat and blue light.
So here, a question arises from somewhere that, instead of a billion plus colors, why only blue?
The thing is, the reaction causes electrons to change their quantum states and emit a blue photon. This quantum-thing happens many times enough to make the blue light visible to us in a candle.
That is the blue part. The next comes the yellow one.
2. The Yellow Part
The heat generated from the blue flame starts to vapourize the wax into gas. The gas particles react with oxygen and there remain substances which are mostly carbon. And yes, we do have a name for that. Call it 'soot'.
The soot starts to glow on becoming hot. It is the millions of glowing tiny particles of soot that you see when looking at the yellow part.
So why does the soot glow?
Atoms vibrating in a piece of a soot produce electromagnetic waves (which is simply light). Not only soot can do this, but everything - even human beings produce electromagnetic waves. We don't see ourselves glow, as we produce waves at a frequency other than the visible light. The soot can do this, it produces light as the yellow color of the seven colors of visible light.
Apart from the topic, we have eyes that don't recognize some electromagnetic waves. And the ones we do is the visible light. This visible light has the frequency we see. Some waveforms don't travel at such right frequencies as the visible light. There are some organisms which only see waves other than that waves we see.
Back to the candle now. Coming to the conclusion, the blue part happens because of quantum transitions, while yellow part happens on glowing of soot particles of the wax.
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Therefore this was how a candle burns. It isn't simple as it sounds or looks. It shows a lot of things can happen in a second.
Had enough of knowledge today.
Going to sleep.
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