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Comment by cableclasper | Hacker News Reader

There's a hell of a lot more.

Michael Faraday's "Chemical History of a Candle" is a very readable masterpiece on the subject, despite its age.

The Engineering Guy has done much to revive Faraday's work: http://www.engineerguy.com/faraday/

One of my favourite books, especially for his demonstration of how they know what's going on at each point of the chemical reaction.

Also, he explains clearly what fire is, which is something that many people puzzle about for all their lives.

He also did a full video series. "Chemical History of a Candle" was originally a series of lectures given by Faraday; he recreated the lectures and the demonstrations. Definitely worth a watch, especially if you don't have a conceptual understanding of fire

Awesome, thank you! "a series of six lectures on the chemistry and physics of flames given by Michael Faraday at the Royal Institution in 1848, as part of the series of Christmas lectures for young people founded by Faraday in 1825 and still given there every year."

First video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W0MHZ4jb4A

And indeed the Royal Institution seems to be still pumping out popular lectures, now available on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/user/TheRoyalInstitution/videos

This is interesting, but why does he speak archaically? I understand it fine, but I'll have to stop the video every 5 seconds to translate for my kid. Is it part of his style in general?

He's reciting directly from Michael Faraday's manuscript

Ah gotcha, thanks!

Thanks for linking that. I did not know the Engineer Guy had a website. His youtube videos are superb. I need more of them, and more often. I was going to comment that I think he is the Carl Sagan of engineering because he explains things with such clarity, and then I noticed on his website that he actually recently received the Carl Sagan award.

I highly recommend that everyone checkout his videos.

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