In the 19th century the great inventor and experimenter Michael Faraday gave a series of public lectures on the chemistry and physics of a candle flame.

In the 21st century some Stanford University researchers have produced a prize-winning video of a burning match.

The two projects were wildly different, one a multipart attempt to give a full scientific explanation that the public could understand, the other a spur-of-the-moment idea that stirred rather than satisfied the scientific appetite.

But both capture the incredible richness of an ordinary thing, a flame.

“The Hidden Complexities of the Simple Match,” by Victor Miller, Matthew Tilghman and Ronald Hanson was one of three videos that won the Milton van Dyke Award at the recent meeting of the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics.