Joint measurement of temperature, pressure and water height as a function of time in the candle covered by a glass experiment

Abstract Rising of liquid inside a glass covering a candle situated on a plate containing water, when the flame is extinguished, is a classical experiment whose justification relies more on physical than on chemical arguments, despite a widely extended wrong explanation based on the reduction of gas moles due to the combustion. The well-known correct explanation of rising water, based on the initial air expansion inside the glass, being heated by the candle flame, and subsequent pressure reduction after the flame is extinguished, is carefully analysed in this work by jointly measuring the variation with time of water height and entry velocity, temperature and pressure inside the glass. These measurements show that the evolution of the water height and entry velocity correlates with that of the pressure inside the glass through a four stages model.