Learn how your body is, scientifically, like a firework with its own slow, controlled burn.

Visualize the components of fireworks

This article provides animated diagrams depicting how different parts of fireworks function. The elements work together through timed mechanisms to produce desired effects.

Fireworks' chemical composition and internal layout produce their unique displays

The burning of different metal compounds, facilitated by combining fuel with oxidizers, results in explosions of varying colors. The timing and pattern are engineered through the arrangement of pellets and fuses.

Fireworks make a loud booming sound after explosion due to air expanding faster than the speed of sound.

Beyond burns, fireworks can harm respiratory, auditory, and visual health.

Variations in rapidly expanding gas and mechanical elements produce fireworks sounds

Chemical compounds designed to vibrate rapidly when ignited produce whistling, screeching sounds, while crackles and pops are created by small star pellets inside the firework, which explode one after another quickly. Fluttering and chirping sounds are produced by spinning elements that rotate rapidly as the firework ascends.

The different energy levels of each element result in unique colors when burned

When heated, electrons absorb energy and move to excited states within an atom. They promptly drop back down and release light energy corresponding to the size of the drop, which is unique to each element.

Explore the chemical compounds found in fireworks

Besides the various salts and metals used to produce fireworks colors, shells are also filled with gunpowder and oxidizers to help fuel and accelerate reactions. Chlorates help strengthen colors, while dextrin, a starch, helps hold mixtures together.

Watch a drone flight through a fireworks display

This video explores the history, construction, and preparation of modern fireworks displays, including creating gunpowder from scratch. Experimentation with fireworks underwater is also featured, but they require special materials to prevent water from infiltrating the fireworks shell.

Watch a pyrotechnician answer questions about fireworks

Professional pyrotechnician Patrick Cyrana answers the internet’s most curious questions about fireworks, from designing ghost effects and exploring how electronic firing systems work to explaining what it takes to create displays in the rain.

Watch a pyromusical display to AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck”

The same principles behind fireworks also power the types of pyrotechnic displays in some live events. Here, you can see an application of the technology in a pyromusical set to rock band AC/DC’s iconic song, “Thunderstruck.”

The surprising science behind Pop Rocks

Have you ever wondered why Pop Rocks makes tiny explosions in your mouth? Well, there's actually pressurized carbon dioxide bubbles trapped within the sugary candy. This 19-second video shows you what Pop Rocks look like under a microscope.

See how fireworks are made and which metals are responsible for different colors.

Watch over a dozen fireworks effects

Adding pellets of salt to gunpowder within a fireworks shell causes them to explode with different colors, but the type of gunpowder used also has an effect. Finely ground gunpowder burns quickly, producing streaks that swiftly burn out.

Visualizing the chemistry of nuclear weapons

Nuclear weapons have devastating effects, but the science of how they work is atomically small. There are two main types of nuclear reaction: fission and fusion. The fission bomb produces immense energy by splitting an atom, the result of firing a...

Spontaneous combustion involves an object igniting on its own

Even without matches, sparks, or external flames, exothermic chemical or biological reactions can increase the internal temperature of objects to the point where they reach a threshold temperature that can cause them to catch fire. Running batteries and fermenting bacteria within compressed materials can build this heat and cause combustion.

Fun family fireworks turn ballistic

The American Pyrotechnics Association estimates that over 10,000 injuries result each year from fireworks, close to three-quarters of which occur around the Fourth of July. This video shows just one rather explosive miscue.

Learn more about the history of fireworks, which date back to an accidental invention during an alchemist's quest for information about immortality.

More than 90% of the atoms in the human body were forged by stars, with almost three-quarters originating from the explosion of massive stars.

Firework or sparkler burns can have large effects on our hands' range of motion.

Fireworks contribute to air, water, and soil contamination and disrupt wildlife

Fireworks displays have far-reaching environmental consequences, including acid rain from displays during storms and microplastic pollution in water supplies. Wildlife has also been seen abandoning sites during fireworks and never returning.

By igniting flammable gas in a tube filled with holes and playing music into it, the fire will take the shape of the sound waves, enabling the visualization of audio.

See images of medical cases of firework injuries shared on this 'Instagram for doctors.' (Warning: Graphic images.)

Visualize what happens to atoms during nuclear fission and how the process produces energy

Nuclear fission occurs when an unstable, often massive, atomic nucleus splits into smaller ones—daughter atoms—and releases energy. Within a nuclear reactor, these daughter atoms can collide and combine with neighboring atoms, destabilizing them and triggering a chain reaction of atomic splitting.

Bioluminescence provides organisms with a method of hunting, defense, or mating

Unlike glow sticks, bioluminescent reactions use renewable resources like oxygen and ATP. This ability allows fireflies to mate and deter predators, anglerfish to confuse and attract prey, and deep-sea shrimp to defend themselves by vomiting glowing slush.

Bioluminescent organisms produce their own light through chemical reactions involving unstable, energetic molecules, while biofluorescent organisms almost immediately re-emit light shone on them, but at a different wavelength.

Fireworks usage on Independence Day comes from their celebratory use in ancient China

Burning bamboo stalks produces a small explosion that was believed to ward off evil spirits. As knowledge of fireworks, which initially used these stalks, carried over into other cultures, so did their use to promote good luck and celebration.

On average, the human body produces about 100 watts of electricity—enough to power a light bulb—but some people can produce over 2,000 watts in short bursts, such as when sprinting.

Earth is the only planet in our solar system with fire

And while the sun seems like fire, and other planets have volcanoes, the sun and lava aren't the same thing as fire. To produce fire, a planet needs three ingredients: oxygen, fuel, and heat. No other planet has all three.

How brain cells carry information

At any moment, there is an electrical storm coursing through your body. Discover how chemical reactions create an electric current that drives our responses to everything from hot pans to a mother’s caress.

'Silent' fireworks are not entirely noise-free

By using a reduced amount of flash powder—the ingredient responsible for the loud explosions that fireworks make—"silent" fireworks produce displays between 70 and 90 decibels, rather than the approximately 175 decibels heard in professional displays.

11 people died from firework injuries in the US in 2024, with most of those deaths involving misuse of the explosives and device malfunctions or misfires.

Firework-related celebrations include an annual summer celebration in El Salvador, where residents throw kerosene-soaked balls to commemorate a 1658 volcanic eruption.

Through sonoluminescence, concentrated sound waves can produce short, high-intensity flashes of light by rapidly collapsing microscopic bubbles to temperatures up to twice that of the sun's surface.

The role of fire in the evolution of humanity's big brains

Roughly 1.5 million years ago, the brain size of our hominin ancestors exploded. To understand why, Richard Wrangham posited the cooking hypothesis, arguing the adoption of fire as a means to cook food had a lasting impact on our ability to digest...

Fireworks-related ER visits in 2024 increased by 52% as compared to the prior year.

'Silent' fireworks have gained more interest in recent years as a quieter celebratory option.

The ritual burns of California forests

Many ecosystems around the world have adapted to regularly occurring wildfires. Some human cultures saw the advantage of such fires and integrated them into their community rituals. Learn about similar tribal traditions looking to better manage California's forests today.

How the body produces urine

Things seem so simple when nature calls. But, how does the body actually produce the urine we so regularly and thoughtlessly expel? This detailed, comprehensive animation walks viewers through every step with precise illustrations, from the kidney's filters (known as nephrons) to the direct nerve connecting the bladder to the brain. See how the body does it here.

A deep dive into how a body decomposes

Dead bodies are, understandably, scary and unsettling. Learn about the fascinating process of decomposition that takes place in every human, and how its teeming with life.

DNA may serve as a flame retardant by self-extinguishing some burning materials

When DNA burns, phosphate groups release phosphoric acid, and nitrogenous bases release ammonia. These molecules, along with the sugar in DNA's backbone, shift the combustion reaction toward the formation of intumescent char. This puffy, carbon-rich layer protects open flames from burning the material beneath.

A quick video on how your immune system works

Explore how your immune system's vast network of cells, tissues, and organs coordinate your body's defenses against bacteria, viruses and toxins with this 5-minute TED talk video.

View an animation of how certain chemicals fluoresce—that is, emit visible light after having absorbed higher-energy light, such as ultraviolet radiation.

When humans discovered fire

Fire has proven crucial for the development of human civilization, but there was a time when our hominin ancestors could not make effective use of it. This article traces the major milestones in humanity's journey with fire based on evidence from...

The basic science of rockets

How do rockets work? What is the science behind a rocket launch? How does a rocket go into space? In this short and simple video, we discuss the science of rocket propulsion and what takes to get these vehicles into orbit.

Explore the biology of pain and why the experience of pain may differ widely from one person to another.

What fuels the sun?

The sun is our biggest source of heat and light, but how does this massive powerhouse continue to produce such amazing energy? Basically, it's a fusion reactor. At its core the sun produces all that solar energy through hydrogen fusing and converting into helium, over and over again. Learn more about the entire amazing and explosive process here.

Fireflies light up to provide mating signals and warnings to predators

Variations in the illumination patterns and flight paths while emitting light have been observed across firefly species. Some species instead rely on pheromones if they are primarily active during the day or have lost the ability to illuminate.

How do vaccines work? Watch this brief 101

Watch this under-3-minute video explaining how vaccines use the body's immune system to prepare our bodies against viral and bacterial threats to our health.

Nuclear fusion, where the nuclei of two atoms are combined, can produce near-limitless clean energy, but requires extreme conditions to kickstart because of the natural repulsion of atomic nuclei.

While both are nuclear weapons, atomic bombs release nuclear energy by splitting large atomic nuclei, whereas hydrogen bombs derive most of their energy from fusing heavy hydrogen isotopes.