Activity
Read Works

Read Works: Stay Candle Safe

For Teachers 2nd - 4th Standards
[Free Registration/Login Required] Students read about safety tips to follow when burning candles. A question sheet is available to help students build skills in author's purpose.
Lesson Plan
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College

Serc: Candle Drop

For Teachers 9th - 10th
By using this discrepant event, students will be guided through an investigation using a burning candle in a jar. The teacher will hold a burning candle in a jar over his/her head. When dropped, the candle will extinguish when caught....
Activity
PBS

Pbs Kids: Dragonfly Tv Do It: Carbon Dioxide

For Students 3rd - 8th
PBS site offers an experiment kids can do at home to see how carbon dioxide can put out burning candles.
Handout
Birmingham Museums Trust (UK)

Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery: The Science of Candles

For Students K - 1st
Click on each question to find the answers to how a candle works.
Lesson Plan
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College

Serc: Observation of a Candle

For Teachers 9th - 10th
In this activity, students observe and test a candle to try and determine what must be present in order for a candle to burn and what the products of combustion are.
Activity
Texas Instruments

Texas Instruments: Burning Volumes

For Teachers 6th - 8th Standards
An analysis of how the volume of various jars impacts the burning time of candles. Data collected will be used to explore modeling, line fitting and linear regression Using graphing calculators.
Activity
TOPS Learning Systems

Tops Learning Systems: Top Science: Will Iron Burn? [Pdf]

For Students 9th - 10th
Explore the oxidation of iron in a candle flame using a nail and steel wool.
Lesson Plan
American Chemical Society

Middle School Chemistry: Lesson Plans: What Is a Chemical Reaction?

For Teachers 9th - 10th
After observing a demonstration of a chemical reaction between a burning candle and the oxygen in the air, learners use atom model cut-outs to model the reaction and see that all the atoms in the reactants show up in the products.
Lesson Plan
BioEd Online

Bio Ed Online: Finding the Carbon in Sugar

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Students learn that fossil fuels release energy when they are burned, and this takes the forms of light, heat, gases, etc. For this lesson they explore combustion with a candle and with sugar. The lesson and accompanying PowerPoint can...
Lesson Plan
University of Texas at Austin

The University of Texas Mc Donald Observatory: Color of Stars

For Teachers 6th - 8th
Students observe colors in the flame of a burning candle to explore connections between matter, light, color, and temperature, the basic concepts of matter and energy.