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Does a lit candle provide an example of chemical change?

Answer 1

Chemical change is characterized by the formation of new substances, and the making and breaking of strong chemical bonds......

So when we light a candle, typically we combust paraffin, #C_31H_64#, an alkane. It may be that we combust more volatile alkanes that are entrained in the wax....

Any alkane's entire combustion reaction can be found by.....

#"Alkane + dioxygen "rarr" carbon dioxide and water"#

The combustion of candle wax would never be complete; there would be incomplete combustion to give #C#, and (small quantities of) #CO#.

And thus burning a candle gives 2 new substances, and breaks strong #C-H# (and some #C-C#) bonds.......This is chemical change by definition.

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Answer 2

Wyatt Adkins

Yes, one can see a chemical change in action by looking at a lit candle.

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Answer from HIX Tutor

When evaluating a one-sided limit, you need to be careful when a quantity is approaching zero since its sign is different depending on which way it is approaching zero from. Let us look at some examples.