the.com/fireworks
controlled explosions we applaud, because humans decided gunpowder should also be pretty.
means Devices packed with gunpowder and metal salts that explode in colorful, noisy bursts for entertainment, especially during celebrations.
from A plain English compound of "fire" and "works" — the second part used in its old sense of "things made or engineered," as in metalworks or waterworks. The gunpowder behind the spectacle is much older, invented in China, where alchemists chasing immortality stumbled instead onto a powder that exploded — and pivoted, sensibly, to making it beautiful.
- colors
- Metal salts: copper for blue, strontium for red
- origin
- Invented in China over a thousand years ago
- speed
- Shells launch at 150 miles per hour
- blue problem
- True blue is the hardest color to make
- sound delay
- You see the boom before you hear it
dubai new year's eve — 6 minutes of continuous fireworks on january 1, 2014, using 500,000 fireworks along 94km of coastline
guy fawkes night — november 5 fireworks celebrations across uk commemorating the 1605 gunpowder plot
sydney harbour new year's — annual midnight fireworks display over sydney harbour since 1986, watched by over 1 million people