Crayons for Light, is it a myth?

On face book and other sites I keep getting all of these survival tips, now don’t get me wrong I like to get them.  But at the same time look at some of them with a bit of skepticism.  It seems like everytime I turned round for the last week or so, I have been receiving a survival tip about using crayons for light.

They have a very nice graphic that shows a crayon burning and underneath it says that a crayon will provide 30 minutes of light.  This afternoon I got to thinking that it would be nice to know if this really works.  You never know when some extra light may be a big help.

So I had my wife find me a crayon and a pie pan.  I stood the crayon in the middle of the pan and attempted to light it.  All I got was some melted crayon and a burned finger.  My second attempt also failed.  By now, the crayon was melted down almost to the paper.  So I made a third try.  Surprise I got a flame, the paper caught and I though success.  Well the flame lasted about a minute and went out.

I tried all kinds of different ways to light a crayon and none would stay burning more than a minute.  Now I don’t know if they were using a different brand or whether I was doing something wrong, but unless something new comes along it is off my list of survival tips.

The point that I really want to make with this is that regardless of what information you receive, you want to try it for yourself.  There is always a learning curve.  If any of you know what I did wrong let me know and I will try it again.

Howard

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