Author: Daniel Faraday

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 physicist, 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. <br> 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.)

A non-mathematical survey of the fundamental forces of nature and some relationships among them. This is a series of lectures aimed at young people. He starts off with the most fundamental and familiar forces of all: Gravity and Heat. Then by a progression of examples and experiments goes on to describe atomic/molecular adhesion in solids, liquids and gases, which he groups under the rubric of "Chemical Affinity". And, no collection of Faraday's theories could omit his discoveries in Electricity and Magnetism. (Summary by William A Jones)