Smoke is small particles of material that are not fully consumed by the flames. They’re the large specks of material that are left over. It’s ash.
So the smoke was what was on fire. But now it’s not. But it’s still small and lightweight, and the air is still warm, so it gets carried up and away for a bit.
This is why you can actually re-light a candle by putting a flame to the smoke trail too.
When a candle is lit, it burns clean and turns into invisible stuff—mostly air and gas you can’t see.
But when you blow it out, the fire stops burning all the way. Some of the melted wax turns into tiny, tiny bits of stuff that didn’t burn fully.
Those tiny bits float into the air and stick together like a little cloud—and that’s the smoke you can see.
So basically: fire turns wax into gas, but blowing it out leaves behind half-melted, not-burned stuff that floats up—and that’s what makes smoke visible.
Smoke is the result of incomplete combustion. Ideally when a candle burns all of the wax that can combine with oxygen will burn in the flame, resulting in mostly carbon dioxide and water being created (and light and heat). Some amount of the wax doesn’t stay hot enough, long enough, to completely burn, and that partially burnt wax is soot/smoke.
When you blow out the candle you remove a lot of the heat, but not all of it. For a short while there’s still enough heat to cause wax to vaporize, and even some of it to still burn, but it will only do so partially, creating more and larger smoke particles than when the flame is still present.
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Smoke is small particles of material that are not fully consumed by the flames. They’re the large specks of material that are left over. It’s ash.
So the smoke was what was on fire. But now it’s not. But it’s still small and lightweight, and the air is still warm, so it gets carried up and away for a bit.
This is why you can actually re-light a candle by putting a flame to the smoke trail too.
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When a candle is lit, it burns clean and turns into invisible stuff—mostly air and gas you can’t see.
But when you blow it out, the fire stops burning all the way. Some of the melted wax turns into tiny, tiny bits of stuff that didn’t burn fully.
Those tiny bits float into the air and stick together like a little cloud—and that’s the smoke you can see.
So basically: fire turns wax into gas, but blowing it out leaves behind half-melted, not-burned stuff that floats up—and that’s what makes smoke visible.
Smoke is the result of incomplete combustion. Ideally when a candle burns all of the wax that can combine with oxygen will burn in the flame, resulting in mostly carbon dioxide and water being created (and light and heat). Some amount of the wax doesn’t stay hot enough, long enough, to completely burn, and that partially burnt wax is soot/smoke.
When you blow out the candle you remove a lot of the heat, but not all of it. For a short while there’s still enough heat to cause wax to vaporize, and even some of it to still burn, but it will only do so partially, creating more and larger smoke particles than when the flame is still present.