MétaCan
Menu
Back to cohort
Record W4408811618 · doi:10.26443/msurj.v1i2.298

Optimizing Candle Shapes for Maximum Flame Luminosity and Minimal Wax Residue

2025· article· en· W4408811618 on OpenAlex

Why this work is in the frame

A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.

affAt least one author lists a Canadian institution in the pinned OpenAlex snapshot.

Bibliographic record

VenueMcGill Science Undergraduate Research Journal · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldChemistry
TopicPhotopolymerization techniques and applications
Canadian institutionsMcGill University
Fundersnot available
KeywordsCandleWaxResidue (chemistry)Materials scienceMathematicsComposite materialChemistryOrganic chemistry

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Combustion processes are among the most widely used energy conversion methods, with candles as a small-scale example. As with similar processes, energy efficiency in candles is often sought. While previous studies have independently investigated the behavior of candle flames, burning wax, and air flows, an optimized relationship between all three remains underexplored. This study aims to investigate candle shapes that maximize flame luminosity and to explore the shapes resulting in minimal wax residue. To investigate the former, the relationship between luminosity and wax pool radius will be explored through both theory and experimentation. Then, for the latter, the growth rate of the wax pool as a function of time will be theoretically and experimentally studied. Candle shapes will be predicted based on the previous results and fluid dynamics theory. They will then be tested and compared. Preliminary results show that an inverted paraboloid-shaped candle produces the most luminous flame, and thin cylindrical candles (radius ~1cm or less) limit wax residue the most, but more trials will be recorded to ensure accuracy of these results and explore more shapes. This study’s limitations include measurement precision affected by environmental factors like natural air currents, even in a controlled setting, and the limited number of candle shapes that can be tested, which might not fully capture the most optimal geometries. Regardless of the specific findings, this study will contribute to a better understanding of small-scale combustion processes, with potential applications in energy efficiency, more sustainable candle designs, and fluid dynamics research.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.002
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.001
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesScience and technology studies
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Bench or experimental · Consensus signal: Bench or experimental
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.445
Threshold uncertainty score0.998

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0020.001
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.001
Science and technology studies0.0040.001
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0010.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.047
GPT teacher head0.370
Teacher spread0.323 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it