The Chemistry of Firework Displays 65
Ponca City, We love you writes "David Ropeik writes at MSNBC that there's a lot more to making a basic firework display than putting a fuel source and an oxidizer together. Pyrotechnic chemists, who are trying to create bedazzlement instead of bang, don't want their work to explode, but to burn for a bit, so it gives a good visual show. To achieve the desired effect, the sizes of the particles of each ingredient have to be just right, and the ingredients have to be blended together just right. To slow down the burning, chemists use big grains of chemicals, in the range of 250 to 300 microns, and they don't blend the ingredients together very well, making it harder for the fuel and oxidizer to combine and burn, thus producing a longer and brighter effect. Surprisingly few emitters are used in pyrotechnics, and there are no commercially useful emitters in blue-green to emerald green in the 490-520 nm region. Energy from the fire in the basic fuel is transferred to the atoms of the colorant chemicals, exciting the electrons in those chemicals into a higher energy state. As they cool down, they move back to a lower state of energy, emitting light. So, you actually see the colors in fireworks as they're cooling down. To get the really tricky shapes, like stars or hearts, the colorant pellets are pasted on a piece of paper in the desired pattern. That paper is put in the middle of the shell with explosive charges above it, and below. When those charges go off, they burn up the paper, and send the ignited colorant pellets out in the same pattern they were in on the sheet of paper, spreading wider apart as they fly."
Slow news day? (Score:1, Insightful)
Slow news day? Or is this a new "educate-the-readers-in-things-they-don't-care-about" program?
There is no news in the article... It sounds like something a student would copy off wikipedia, mingle a bit, throw in some metaphores, and turn into a school essay.
Did you mean idle? It's posted under news...
July 4!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Slow news day? (Score:5, Insightful)
Show me ONE geek that does not care about shiny things that go boom!
Re:Slow news day? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmmmmmm....We make a lot of noise about it and we watch it go up in smoke, even enjoying it when we don't really think about it, while costing a fortune, but in the end we got nothing but a big show...
Yup, freedom fireworks is quite apt.
Re:Slow news day? (Score:4, Insightful)
Chill out dude! You don't have to read the article and the small space used on the /. front page is not going ruin your day.
Maybe some of us actually care about how fireworks work. That is a natural geek tendency. What's so wrong with that?
4th of July (Score:1, Insightful)
233 years and still leaving naysayers stumped like rain forests!
Now let's take it back to what it stood for those 2 centuries ago and throw the Democran and Republicrat bums out.