In five videos, I share with you Michael Faraday's great 19th century lecture series, The Chemical History of a Candle. Faraday's set of a candle. There's no more open door by which you can enter into the study of science than by considering the physical phenomena of a candle. Even now, 150 years after Faraday delivered his lectures, one would be hard-pressed to find an object of study that would equal a candle. Through a careful examination of a burning candle, Faraday reveals the concepts of mass, density, heat conduction, capillary action, and convection currents. He demonstrates the difference between chemical and physical processes. He reveals the properties of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide. And, in a stunning final lecture, he uses a candle to explain human respiration. In creating these videos, we used Faraday's original language because his poetic terms of phrase charmed us. We changed his words only when necessary. We updated terminology, especially chemical terms, and we replaced some demonstrations with modern or safer ones. Even with these changes, the lectures can be a challenge for the modern viewer, and so to help today's viewers appreciate the lectures my co-creators and I have done three things. First, we created an altered version of each lecture that has a commentary track. In the commentary track, my co-creator Don DeCostini, guide viewers through the lectures, highlighting the concepts underlying Faraday's demonstrations. And second, we added captions to all the videos, including the commentary versions. And third, we wrote a companion book for this video series that is available as a PDF for free. The book contains the complete transcript of each lecture is delivered in the video series to help you grasp Faraday's key points. It has an essential background section that explains in modern terms how a candle works. And each lecture is preceded by a short guide written in contemporary language. These guides mirror the lectures chronologically so you can follow while watching the lectures. In addition, the book has a detailed teaching guide. Faraday aimed his lectures toward those new to science, especially young people. His lectures remain today an excellent introduction to the scientific method and serve well as an entry point to the chemical sciences. The teaching guide contains a section called the big ideas of chemistry, which uses simple analogies to introduce younger students to the particulate nature of matter. Following this, the guide contains six activities and one set of demonstrations that teachers can use to help students investigate for themselves the chemical history of a candle. Each activity has a student worksheet followed by a teacher's guide. Teachers can use these guides in student worksheets for free. We give you the complete book free as a PDF. You can download the book at engineerguy.com slash Faraday, or you can buy it as an ebook in paperback or hardcover. So I hope you enjoy the lectures. For me and my co-creators Don DeCoste, to Alex Black, they were a labor of love. I'm Bill Hammock, the engineer guy.