FIREWORKS--OR, OOH, AAH, How Do They Do That?

One of my earliest memories involves a Fourth of July spent at Annandale, Minnesota, sitting on a hill and watching fireworks. Our family had a cabin on Cedar Lake, a mile and a half away, and we had come to the display with a recently emptied ice cream tub filled with popcorn and a thermos of raspberry Kool-Aid. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the first time I ever was allowed to stay up beyond my 8:00 bedtime.

Like all kids and many adults, I sat stock still with my mouth open the entire time. I had never seen anything like it. Red, yellow and green flowers in the sky and loud explosions that had me reaching for my mother's hand. And at the end came the hissing, spitting and smoky American flag in red, white and blue.

Wow! How did they do that?

Neither my mother or father had any idea. I was curious but never did anything to find out how it all worked until this year when I watched the fireworks display with the Boston Pops on television. I finally decided I had to know and Googled up a great website called howstuffworks.com. If reading this article will spoil next year's fun for you, stop right here.

Ready? Put simply, fireworks are variants of two common Fourth of July objects-sparklers and firecrackers -- in a paper and string jacket and launched by a mortar. Firecrackers are really nothing more than miniature sticks of dynamite with paper and black powder fuses. They are meant to burn quickly and explode. Sparklers are like corn dogs, a rod surrounded by metal particles held together with a resinous glue and are meant to burn more slowly. Aluminum, magnesium and zinc all burn brilliantly.

In fireworks, sparklers are called stars and firecrackers are bursting charges. The stars may be spheres, cubes, or cylinders. They resemble a can of peas with a firecracker in the middle. The firecracker is the bursting charge. A mortar, which actually is a pipe, launches the fireworks into the sky. The body of the star also contains black powder to help ignite the charges, and metallic flakes to create the beautiful sparks.

The incendiary process begins when the technician lights the launching charge in the mortar. This also ignites the fuse inside the charge. The bursting charge is timed to go off at the proper altitude where it ignites the stars and throws them off. The arrangement inside the package will determine the shape of the display. Like a Russian doll, the stars may have more stars inside of them, and they with stars inside of them.

The most common displays are the palm, the round shell, the ring shell, the willow, the roundel, the chrysanthemum, the pistil, the maroon shell and the serpentine. The palm, willow and chrysanthemum are very common and contain long-burning elements to form streamers. The maroon shell is the noise maker. The other variants are self-explanatory except the roundel, which is a circle of shells exploding in sequence; the pistil which is like the chrysanthemum but with a different-colored center; and the serpentine. The serpentine is the spectacular buzzing and skittering incendiary that makes exploding stars.

The colors come from various inorganic compounds called emitters. The most difficult to make is blue because the color disperses so quickly. Green is the easiest to produce and will last the longest. Red, orange, and yellow have a shorter life-span but are quite brilliant and simple to manufacture. For those who have an interest in chemistry, red comes from strontium chloride; orange, from strontium hydroxide. The other colors are as follows:yellow, sodium; green, barium chloride; and blue and violet, copper chloride. Blue, the most difficult to produce, requires a fuel oxidizer system.

There, in a nutshell, is the whole process. If my Dad had known and told me, I wouldn't have understood a word he said. But I know I would have felt cheated, somehow. It's like letting the genie out of the bottle. Once gone, it's never quite the same.

John Anderson spent most of his life selling stamps and other collectibles. He now is a full-time writer and is the author of The Cellini Masterpiece, under the pen-name of Raymond John. John can be reached at http://www.cmasterpiece.com and will be happy to respond. You can also read a sample chapter of his novel at that address.