Colourful Candles: Darn Clever Those Chinese

And now for something completely different . . . . .

Being that time of the year my wife and I went out and visited for dinner this Boxing Day evening. The host brought out a couple of candles and lit them, and about then I realised that these were no ordinary candles. As soon as they were lit, or at least no more than a second later, the whole candle started to emit a colourful glow.

Shown in the above picture, these candles are about 2” in diameter and about 4” high. Examining these candles—in the half light of the setting sun sitting out under our guest’s patio—I could not see how these candles were doing this.

About half a second after the candle is blown out it stops emitting the colourful glow.

These are real candles using real wax. During the evening they were left burning for at least three hours and only burnt down about 1mm. During this entire time they continued to glow different colours.

They are made in China, and I known those darn Chinese are very clever, but how do they do this?

Following is another picture showing the candles at a different point in their colour change rotation.

I plan to get to the bottom of this (as I am sure the answer is in the bottom, somewhere).

When I do I will post the answer.

Barry.