Candle Trick

Tonight we're going to show you a candle trick that you can use to impress your date at your next candlelit dinner. What we're going to show you is how you can light a candle without touching the wick.

Okay, so Nigel is going to, uh, light up a wooden splint here. I'm going to blow out this candle, and then we're going to relight the candle without touching the wick. Ready?

I'm ready when you are. One, two, three! You see that? It's just that easy! Maybe we should have a look at that in slow motion so you can see that the flame is actually traveling from the splint back down to the wick.

So what's going on there? Well, what's happening is that this trick is utilizing the states of matter in the candle. Most people are familiar with the fact that a candle is made of solid wax, and when there's a flame burning in there, you can see there's a pool of liquid wax. But with the flame burning around the liquid wax, we're actually getting a lot of wax vapor, and it's the wax vapor which is actually burning, not the wick.

Exactly! So when we blow the flame at the wick, there is still that wax vapor hanging around. We can relight the wax vapor above the wick, and you can watch that flame kind of travel down through that wax vapor back to the wick and relight the candle.

Exactly! So as a final part of our trick, why don't we try to blow all three out and relight them in one go?

Yes! And you can use this to rekindle your romance, you boy. Bo!