Looking into Fire

This morning, Orlando said, "Let's save energy and light a candle and put it here on the table and have the light from the windows and that will be enough."

Last year, during the winter, we used candles in the morning instead of turning on our lights. He remembers.

So I lit a candle and put it on the table, and Mica could barely restrain himself, "I want to blow it! I want to blow it!" but Orlando wanted to blow it out, too. And as the many dozens of times a day when two boys want the same thing, we try to remember and stop and ask ourselves, "What can we do?"

Orlando's idea was that Mica could blow it out and I could light it again, and then Orlando could blow it out. So that is what we did.

I don't remember if that was before or after we ate the oatmeal, but in the midst of the candle-worshiping, I was cooking oatmeal for breakfast, and the kids wanted to help me, and we all tucked into the corner where the sink and stove meet and filled the pot and put it on the stove, and the click-click-clicking of the gas stove burst into flame, and breakfast was on its way.

And then Orlando was spinning around the living room/dining room (not far from the kitchen) wondering aloud, "I wonder why fire is different colors."

He stopped, "I mean, the fire on the stove looked blue. But when I was looking at the candle, it wasn't blue."

I jumped up and got the question book. Already, he was following the scientific method — he had his question and he was making observations.

So, I started writing things down...

QUESTION:
Why is fire different colors?
Why is it sometimes purple and blue?

OBSERVATIONS:
Fire is usually red and orange and yellow.
Sometimes it is purple and blue.
I noticed it was blue on the stove, with a little orange and purple.
In candles, I noticed it was red and orange and yellow.

HYPOTHESES:
Maybe because the stove — a stove is different than a candle.
A stove uses gas, and a candle uses a wick. {Thanks, Mama.}
Maybe they are different kinds of fire — gas makes a different kind of fire.
Maybe it's because they are different sizes. The candle flame is smaller.
Maybe it is hotter on the stove.
Maybe because one is wax.

We hadn't gotten around to developing ways to test these hypotheses, yet. Who knows what happened (marble run, restaurant, baby dinosaurs, some drawing?) in the hours from then until I re-lit the candle to take a picture for the blog, but Mica noticed that there was blue in the flame of the candle. Aha! Another observation, which will help us come up with different hypotheses, which we can then find a way to test, or at least research.

Books are already on their way from the library. He's ready to ask a few folks in the community for their theories, and we'll see where we end up.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with this, something Orlando said as he gazed into the candle flame this morning:

I just like that look, that standing-up look. It's like a sword or a letter opener. I like that. I just like the way those things look. That kind of pointiness, like standing-up.

{Can you even believe it?!}

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