Jack-o'-Lantern Candle Flame Chemistry

Candle Controls

Wick exposure 6.0 mm

Airflow / draft 0.10 m/s

Wax melting point Paraffin (61°C)

Flame State

Flame height

0 mm

Burn rate

0.0 mg/s

Status

Lit

Wax remaining

100%

Dark zone — unburned wax vapor rising from the wick, too fuel-rich to burn

Luminous zone — incandescent soot particles glow yellow-orange

Blue mantle — thin outer sheath where vapor meets O₂ and burns completely

How it works

A candle flame is a diffusion flame: fuel and oxidizer are not premixed but meet and burn where they diffuse into contact. Capillary action draws melted wax up the wick, where heat vaporizes it into flammable hydrocarbon gas.

Dark/blue core — just above the wick, vapor is too rich in fuel and too cool to ignite; almost no light is emitted here.
Luminous yellow zone — further out, partial combustion cracks the hydrocarbons into tiny glowing soot particles (mostly carbon) that are heated to incandescence, giving the classic yellow-orange glow, then burn away or escape as smoke.
Outer blue mantle — a thin sheath where hot gases finally meet ambient oxygen and burn completely to CO₂ and H₂O, hot enough to emit blue light instead of the soot's yellow.

Airflow strips heat and disturbs this layered structure — a strong draft thins the fuel-air mixture, bends and starves the flame, and past a critical drop in temperature the flame can no longer sustain vaporization and self-extinguishes.

t = 0.0 s

💨 Flame extinguished
Press "Relight candle" to relight