The Chemical History of a Candle: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

The Chemical History of a Candle, credited to Michael Faraday, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of The Chemical History of a Candle, by Michael Faraday. Read by Availle. The Chemical History of a Candle is a series of 6 lectures on chemistry presented to a juvenile audience in 1848. Taught by Michael Faraday - a chemist and physist, and regarded as the best experimentalist in the history of science - it is probably the most famous of the Christmas Lectures of the Royal Society. Taking the everyday burning of a candle as a starting point, Faraday spans the arc from combustion and its products, via the components of water and air (oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon), back to the type of combustion that happens in the human body when we breathe. The final lecture "On Platinum" describes a then new method to produce large quantities of Platinum. It was delivered before the Royal Institution on February 22, 1861. (Summary by Availle.)

Recording facts

• Recording title: The Chemical History of a Candle
• Author credits: Michael Faraday
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 8
• Listed recording duration: 4:32:09

Catalogue topics

• non-fiction
• science
• chemistry
• physics
• christmas lectures
• Royal Society

Track guide

1. 0 Preface — 3:31
2. 1 Lecture I — 36:35
3. 2 Lecture II — 32:15
4. 3 Lecture III — 38:43
5. 4 Lecture IV — 34:37
6. 5 Lecture V — 39:32
7. 6 Lecture VI — 41:33
8. 7 Lecture on Platinum — 45:27

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.