Fireworks!

(This week both the Musings page and Notes from Papaw have the same post. I’m either lazy or on vacation. Honestly, I’m not sure which.)

This Saturday is the Fourth of July. People around the nation will attend parades, have picnics, light of fireworks at their home, and if your city is having one, attend a professional fireworks display. There you can see bursts of wonderful colors and different shapes, golden showers of sparkles, and eye-widening kabooms!

Have you ever wondered how professional fireworks are made? Ya, so did I. So let’s take a look at the anatomy of a typical firework. When you see a firework display from the launching end, It looks like a bunch of tubes all lined up together. These tubes are called mortars. Inside the tube is the shell. The shell is made of two parts, The lifting charge and the color pellets. The lifting charge is located on the bottom of the shell that is usually made of black powder. It is there to lift the top section high into the air. This makes it easier to see. It also keeps the explosions, sparks, and any hot embers away from people and high enough to burn out before they hit the ground. The top section of the shell has the colorful part. It contains small pellets called stars. These can be made to produce different colors, shapes, and noises. Some of the designs are proprietary, which means they were invented by the firework makers, and the formulas are closely guarded secrets. There are usually at least two fuses. The first fuse lights the lift charge. Once the firework is safely in the air, a second fuse, sometimes called the timer fuse, causes the section with the stars to explode (the burst charge) and starts the stars burning also. They now can even create designs with the fireworks. One special firework that I have seen ends up making a smiley face!

The colors usually come from various metal salts. A salt is a combination of a metal and one or more nonmetals. Table salt is sodium chloride, made of the metal sodium and a gas called chlorine. Here is a list of the most commonly used salts.

Strontium: Red

Calcium: Orange

Sodium: Yellow

Barium: Green

Copper: Blue

Strontium + Copper: Purple

Magnesium, Aluminum + Titanium: White

(Source: https://www.ontariosciencecentre.ca/science-at-home/diy-science-fun/the-science-of-fireworks)

And to think these all started with the Chinese putting gun powder into long bamboo tubes. This is thought to have happened somewhere between 600-800 AD, during the Tang Dynasty.

For those of you who don’t have a fireworks display in their home town, here is a display from 2025, courtesy of the Happiest Place on Earth, Disneyland. Enjoy!