Effects of Stearic Acid on Burning Time of Candles Joy Aguilar Sir Winston Churchill Secondary Floor Location : J 34 E

The problem/question in this experiment is, do wax hardeners (e.g. stearic acid) affect a candle's burning time?

To answer my problem/question, I composed the hypothesis, if a candle's burning time is related to the amount of stearic acid that it is composed of, the more stearic acid that a candle is consisted of, the longer burning time that it will have.

In order to verify that my hypothesis was correct or not, I first created candles. I melted paraffin wax in a juice can that was placed in a pot of water (this pot of water was positioned on a stove). Once the paraffin wax melted, I added 42 grams of stearic acid. After the stearic acid fully dissolved, I poured the wax/stearic acid concoction into votive molds. This batch of candles was labeled as batch #2. I created four more batches of candles after with different amounts of stearic acid; batch #3 contained 84 g stearic acid, batch #4 included 126 g, batch #5 contained 168 g, and the batch #1 (the control) included no stearic acid at all. After storing all the batches of candles for about a day (the candles were wrapped in paper towel and placed on top of my bookshelf), I lit all of the candles at once and timed them to see how long each candle burned for.

The results of this experiment showed that the control (which was stearic acid-free) average burning time was 441 minutes. Batch #2's (which consisted of candles composed of 42 grams of stearic acid) average burning time was 464.75 minutes. As for batch #3 (84 grams of stearic acid), its average burning time was 466.22 minutes. Batch #4's (126 grams of stearic acid in total) average burning time was 489 minutes, and Batch #5's (168 grams of stearic acid) average burning time was 645.27 minutes.

From the results of this experiment, I can conclude that the hypothesis stated above was correct; the more stearic acid that a candle is composed of, the longer that it will burn for.