this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2024
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The candle that burns four times as bright burns a quarter as long
... How dare you nerd snipe me
...
Now, if brightness is amplitude of light ... But is it? Is it like sound that we perceive logarithmically? And if it's burning wax at 4x the rate, will it be yet brighter because more of the gases ignite? Why is it burning faster? Has it four wicks? Thicker wick? Different geometry? Or does it imply a better oxygen source? If oxygen, again, maybe the same rate of wax burns brighter. Or maybe not: maybe it's as simple as, the same proportion of wax burns, releasing the same amount of light energy, in the same spectral distribution, as long as you stay within practical parameters (e.g. not hot enough to get secondary combustion - if that even happens for candle smoke). Okay so I think the candle burning 4x the rate will make 4x the light, in which case it's just a question of perception, but we can argue that brightness really is amplitude - or is it the square root because... bother my brain's gone blank but it's like an amplitude Vs magnitude thing but those are the same so it must be something else... But if we call amplitude brightness then I think yes, the same-mass candle burning at 4x brightness will burn out in a quarter of the time. Phew, I think I can correctly upvote your comment.
Wouldn't brightness be proportional to the square root of the amount of light released? Also they didn't mention the mass of the wax in the two candles.
That's right, light goes out in all directions, not all focused towards your eye. So the 4x as bright candle burns 16x as fast?
I assumed mass is kept constant. Or it would be, "the candle that burns four times as bright is really heavy."