The 4th of July Brought to You By SCIENCE!

Its that time of year. The time that we all come together over grilled meats, and explosions of color in the night sky. Since the advent of gunpowder in ancient China, these fantastical displays have been lighting up the night sky to celebrate everything from national holidays to your favorite sports team winning. In the deafening myriad of "OOOOHH" and "AAAAWWWW", have you ever wondered how those blasts of color are created? This simple answer: because SCIENCE!!!!

Atoms of different elements have different electron configurations. At the instant of the explosion of the firework, energy is imparted into all of those atoms, knock some of their electrons from their orbitals to higher ones. As this is unstable for them, the electron relaxes back to its regular orbital by emitting a photon of a particular wavelength and energy. We see this in the form of color and light.

Magnesium electron configuration courtesy of webelements.com

For fireworks displays, salts of different elements are used to create the colors which light up the dark. A salt is simply a positively charged cation (Na+) combined with a negatively charged anion or anionic complex (Cl-) to form a solid, think of table salt NaCl. Below is a list of common salts found in fireworks.

Table courtesy of: Helmenstine, Anne Marie, Ph.D. "The Chemistry of Firework Colors." ThoughtCo, Jul. 1, 2019, thoughtco.com/chemistry-of-firework-colors-607341..

So this Independence Day as you look up at the dazzling display in the sky, remember that it is the result of chemistry happening right in front of you.

Have a happy and safe 4th.

-Science By GRS

#Chemistry #Fireworks #Science