P2_5 The burning of the Sistine Chapel

Abstract

The celebration of Pentecost involves burning a candle across a 50 day period, so we thought about the idea of a single candle burning all of the oxygen in a sealed room. We decided to investigate how big a candle we would need to burn all of the oxygen in the Sistine Chapel, and how much the temperature changes from this. Using a paraffin wax candle, we found the required mass of the candle to be 985 kg, and the total temperature increase to be 3830 K.