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The candle: the shadow of the flame

Author: Michael Faraday Year: 1861 Length: 460 characters Difficulty: easy Public domain

Faraday speaks in long sentences held together by semicolons, so this one trains punctuation inside a steady flow.

You observe the shadow of the candle and of the wick; then there is a darkish part, as represented in the diagram, and then a part which is more distinct. Curiously enough, however, what we see in the shadow as the darkest part of the flame is, in reality, the brightest part; and here you see streaming upwards the ascending current of hot air, as shewn by Hooke, which draws out the flame, supplies it with air, and cools the sides of the cup of melted fuel.

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About this text

In the first lecture Faraday puts a candle in front of a screen and shows that the darkest part of the shadow matches the brightest part of the flame. He credits Robert Hooke for the account of the rising current of hot air. Faraday used no mathematics in the whole series; he argued from what the audience could see in front of them. The lectures were taken down by a reporter and printed in 1861 as The Chemical History of a Candle.

About this text

In the first lecture Faraday puts a candle in front of a screen and shows that the darkest part of the shadow matches the brightest part of the flame. He credits Robert Hooke for the account of the rising current of hot air. Faraday used no mathematics in the whole series; he argued from what the audience could see in front of them. The lectures were taken down by a reporter and printed in 1861 as The Chemical History of a Candle.

What it trains

Faraday speaks in long sentences held together by semicolons, so this one trains punctuation inside a steady flow.

Public domain

Copyright has expired or never applied, so anyone can copy the text and use it further.

Source: domena publiczna, Project Gutenberg

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