Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: and how the tech are you? You know, here in
Speaker 1: the United States, it's the fourth of July. Technically it's
Speaker 1: it's fourth of July other places too, but here in
Speaker 1: the United States that date has historical significance and as such,
Speaker 1: we observe it as a holiday, which means I am
Speaker 1: not at work today, and Tari is not at work today,
Speaker 1: and I don't believe in making people work on holidays,
Speaker 1: and so we are going to listen to a classic
Speaker 1: episode of text Stuff. This is a part one of
Speaker 1: a two partern so tomorrow we'll listen to part two.
Speaker 1: Because there's just something in me where I can't just
Speaker 1: let it go, where I just play part one and
Speaker 1: never play part two. Here we go. This episode originally
Speaker 1: published on July twenty third, two thousand and fourteen, and
Speaker 1: it is called tech Stuff. Lights Some Fireworks Enjoy. Here's
Speaker 1: something I wondered as we were watching the traditional Independence
Speaker 1: Day festivities. What kind of tech goes into a professional
Speaker 1: fireworks display? What do they use to sink up the
Speaker 1: fireworks with music is their fancy tech that goes into
Speaker 1: the creation of fireworks. Most of the ones I saw
Speaker 1: tonight were the standard fare starbursts that could change their colors.
Speaker 1: They burned, uh, though some twinkled like little Christmas lights,
Speaker 1: flashing on and off in a way I wouldn't expect
Speaker 1: from just a chemical burn. I also remember years ago
Speaker 1: seeing some explode into a smiley face, though I haven't
Speaker 1: seen as many of those recently. I also wondered if
Speaker 1: there's anything that makes them safer, though I'm not sure
Speaker 1: how safe you could ever make something that's designed to
Speaker 1: explode if it hasn't been done already. It might be
Speaker 1: cool to hear about how fireworks work. And Cyber Knight,
Speaker 1: we are totally going to meet your expectations. We are
Speaker 1: going to exceed them actually, because they at there's a
Speaker 1: lot of science. There is. There's much, many much sciences.
Speaker 1: In fact, I would say more science than tech when
Speaker 1: you get down to it. However, it's a technology of chemistry. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is applied chemistry, so there is. And we have
Speaker 1: demonstrated on the show previously that we like fire Yeah.
Speaker 1: We did a full episode. By the way, sorry, we
Speaker 1: didn't talk about compression fire starters. I had it in
Speaker 1: my notes, did not fill it out, and then we
Speaker 1: were taken to task for it. Rightfully, So I would say,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna we're gonna be very thorough as it
Speaker 1: turns out with fireworks, because while I was thinking about it,
Speaker 1: you know, just covering the basics, the more I got
Speaker 1: into the chemistry, the more exciting it was, the more
Speaker 1: interesting it was, and the more I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm in for opinion for a pound. If the government's
Speaker 1: going to see how I'm looking about, you know, how
Speaker 1: to make gunpowder, might as well go all in. So
Speaker 1: we're going to talk all about it. Definitely one of
Speaker 1: those that were like, okay, what interesting watch lists are
Speaker 1: we on? At least three or four more? So we
Speaker 1: should probably define what a firework is is for just
Speaker 1: just the purposes of framing the discussion, right, sure, Well,
Speaker 1: you know, at its base, I suppose it's something that
Speaker 1: explodes for fun. Yes, that's pretty much it. A firework
Speaker 1: is something that is explosive or combustible, and it's meant
Speaker 1: for display purposes, to to create an impressive light display
Speaker 1: or exactly. Yeah, you could get a firecracker, which is
Speaker 1: really meant to make a lot of noise, or your
Speaker 1: you might get a Roman candle, which doesn't make a
Speaker 1: lot of noise, but it is very impressive light show. Uh.
Speaker 1: And of course then there's all the stuff that also
Speaker 1: falls into the fireworks category, things like sparklers, that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. We're mostly gonna be focusing on your traditional fireworks,
Speaker 1: the stuff that you would go and look up into
Speaker 1: the sky and see that plays that are launched from
Speaker 1: something into the air exactly, So your your common basic
Speaker 1: ingredients and fireworks are well. It's black powder, also known
Speaker 1: as gunpowder. You know, pretty pretty simple, relatively simple. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's traditionally made from sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate, which
Speaker 1: back in ye old days was called saltpeter. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: back in the old days, he mostly got it from India,
Speaker 1: at least if you were in the Western hemisphere, you
Speaker 1: got it from India. Uh. In fact, I read an
Speaker 1: interesting article published in eighteen sixty one by the New
Speaker 1: York Times about the various powder mills, which we'll talk
Speaker 1: about a little bit, uh in the United States, and
Speaker 1: essentially it was running down how the South didn't have
Speaker 1: enough powder mills for this Civil War thing to be
Speaker 1: a big deal. As it turns out, four more years later,
Speaker 1: they probably felt like that was maybe a little premature.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, that that turned out to be less
Speaker 1: correct than they had hoped. It was a certainly, you know,
Speaker 1: I think it was an optimistic take on what ended
Speaker 1: up being a very trying time in the U. S. History.
Speaker 1: But we're going to focus on the fireworks. So speaking
Speaker 1: of history, looking at the history of fireworks, this is
Speaker 1: stuff of legend. As it turns out, Oh, certainly, because
Speaker 1: I mean, guess what neither of us were around two
Speaker 1: to three thousand years ago to observe and we don't
Speaker 1: have a real way back machine. Yeah, I'm really sorry, guys,
Speaker 1: we have been lying to you. It's just a special effect.
Speaker 1: It's a really special effect. It is. It is very special. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: if someone has not actually documented it in a way
Speaker 1: that is verifiable, we cannot, in fact go back and
Speaker 1: say exactly what happened. But we can tell you what
Speaker 1: the legends are. Yes, there's a legend that over two
Speaker 1: thousand years ago in China, a chef, a chef was
Speaker 1: mixing together some charcoal, some sulfur, and some saltpeter, and
Speaker 1: those were all ingredients that were found in field kitchens. Okay,
Speaker 1: so uh yeah, apparently just accidentally happened to measure these
Speaker 1: in the or or mix these in the right amounts,
Speaker 1: because it's not like you have equal parts of each ingredient.
Speaker 1: It's actually more precise than that. Aren't going to talk
Speaker 1: about that because I don't want you guys making gunpowder,
Speaker 1: so don't try that at home. But this chef happened
Speaker 1: upon this recipe, Yeah, discovered that if you compress it,
Speaker 1: like if you put it into a container of some sort,
Speaker 1: and then if it were too I don't know, come
Speaker 1: into contact with any kind of flame, it blows up.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that chefs survived this discovery, because
Speaker 1: I don't even know if the chef's existed, So it's
Speaker 1: all up in the air really literally possibly depending upon
Speaker 1: where the gunpowder was. Now, if you look up the
Speaker 1: history of fireworks online, like if you were to actually
Speaker 1: go and put into your favorite search engine history of fireworks,
Speaker 1: you're going to find a particular story told repeatedly throughout
Speaker 1: numerous links, most of which go to like fireworks manufacturers
Speaker 1: and as like many other research topics, on the Internet.
Speaker 1: They all tell basically the same story and basically the
Speaker 1: same wording without any particular reference anything real. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: no citation, right, yeah, so that so what the legend
Speaker 1: is is that there was a monk in China named
Speaker 1: le Chian who lived around quote a thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: That is always the way it's put, by the way,
Speaker 1: around a thousand years ago. It's never given a date.
Speaker 1: It just as around a thousand years ago. And so
Speaker 1: depending upon when this was written, you know, and anyway,
Speaker 1: so much so many different sources use the exact wording.
Speaker 1: I expect they all took their information from either the
Speaker 1: same source or they're just borrowing it from each other.
Speaker 1: It's just this big circle of people borrowing the same stuff.
Speaker 1: But the best scholarly source I could find simply said
Speaker 1: that the first firecracker was made sometime around eleventh century
Speaker 1: Common era in China, so eleventh century a d if
Speaker 1: you prefer, in China. And this was the time when
Speaker 1: Chinese alchemists were searching for something called the elixir of life.
Speaker 1: And along the way, while trying to find this elixir
Speaker 1: of life, they they mixed a bunch of different kinds
Speaker 1: of stuff together and found lots of interesting things, not
Speaker 1: the elixir life, but as it turns out, they found
Speaker 1: out about gunpowder. Just kind of like an a lixer
Speaker 1: of death. When you think about it, it can be
Speaker 1: certainly with the with the incorrect application. So the first
Speaker 1: firecracker was probably a parchment tube loosely filled with this
Speaker 1: mixture of saltpeter, sulfur and willow charcoal. Willow charcoal, by
Speaker 1: the way, one of the more popular forms. As it
Speaker 1: turns out, you want to use softer woods to create
Speaker 1: the charcoal because the harder woulds tend to create too
Speaker 1: much ash. I learned that while I was doing all
Speaker 1: this research. Now, once these things were invented, they started
Speaker 1: to spread throughout the world gradually, usually through trade. Uh.
Speaker 1: Sometime between twelve thirty five and twelve nine, d Roger
Speaker 1: Bacon began to experiment with an early form of black powder.
Speaker 1: This was again stuff that had probably been brought to
Speaker 1: the Western world through trade, yeah, mostly through Arabic traders.
Speaker 1: Most likely the story goes that Marco Polo brought some over,
Speaker 1: but it's much more likely that it was Arabic traders
Speaker 1: well before Marco Polo's journeys. But at any rate Bacon's
Speaker 1: work would lead to the development of what we know
Speaker 1: as gunpowder today. Yes, he would. He would sort of
Speaker 1: refine this mixture, finding the right proportions of mixing these
Speaker 1: ingredients together to get something that would work very well
Speaker 1: if you wanted to, uh, you know, launch something at somebody,
Speaker 1: like say a cannonball. Sure, because if you mix all
Speaker 1: of these things together, you get a good bright flash,
Speaker 1: and if you compress them beforehand, you get a big
Speaker 1: boom as well. Yep, yep. Otherwise, like if you've ever
Speaker 1: seen those videos of or films of people taking the
Speaker 1: old timey photographs with the flash powder, where it just
Speaker 1: it just lights up, and that was how they created
Speaker 1: a flash since they didn't have the capacitors to make
Speaker 1: up a flashing light bulb. That's what gunpowder does. If
Speaker 1: it's just out in the open. You've probably seen this.
Speaker 1: It's you know, it's also really popular in like cartoons
Speaker 1: and stuff. You see the long trail of gunpowder and
Speaker 1: the exactly so that really is how it just burns
Speaker 1: really really quickly. Now, the gunpowder industry and fireworks industry
Speaker 1: are very closely linked together. Improvements in developing gunpowder and
Speaker 1: the methodology for producing it were ported over to work
Speaker 1: in fireworks as well, and early fireworks displays were developed
Speaker 1: in China and India for religious festivals. Uh. There aren't
Speaker 1: really written accounts of how these fireworks spread throughout the world.
Speaker 1: But again we think that Arabic traders probably brought this
Speaker 1: stuff over into Europe and the Europeans said, Wow, that's amazing,
Speaker 1: that's awesome, let's bloss stuff up here too. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: in fact, for a long time they were importing this
Speaker 1: stuff from the East, and in fact would even higher
Speaker 1: experts from the East to come and do the displays
Speaker 1: in in Europe. It would only be in the late
Speaker 1: Middle Ages early Renaissance when you started seeing Europeans try
Speaker 1: and take on this responsibility themselves. Uh. Now, by the
Speaker 1: Italian Renaissance, fireworks creators began to experiment with adding extra
Speaker 1: ingredients to mixtures to use different colors of light, so
Speaker 1: for example, adding copper to create blue light. We'll talk
Speaker 1: more about adding color to fireworks a bit later. So
Speaker 1: the thing is, if you want to learn more about
Speaker 1: what the displays back in the Middle Ages were like,
Speaker 1: there are only a few accounts. A lot of them though,
Speaker 1: come from England, because it turns out the English were
Speaker 1: bananas over this stuff. The Italians and Germans were working
Speaker 1: really hard on improving fireworks technology, and the English were
Speaker 1: enjoying the heck out of it. We'll be back with
Speaker 1: more in just a moment. So one of the accounts
Speaker 1: says that during the wedding of Henry the Seventh also
Speaker 1: known as Henry Tudor and Elizabeth of York in four six,
Speaker 1: there were fireworks displays. Others talk more about Elizabeth's coronation,
Speaker 1: so there's a little bit of a argument there. The
Speaker 1: same is true for Henry the eighth wedding uh and Bleyn,
Speaker 1: which was a wife number two. I think I think
Speaker 1: she had a good head on her shoulders. Uh not
Speaker 1: for long. Spoiler art James Anthony Froud wrote that there
Speaker 1: were quote wild men casting fire and making a hideous
Speaker 1: noise end quote, which I think is a fantastic description
Speaker 1: of fireworks. When I was a kid, I hated them
Speaker 1: because I didn't like loud noise, and even just seeing
Speaker 1: the fireworks burst in the sky made me made my
Speaker 1: anxiety levels go up because I knew a loud noise
Speaker 1: was coming right right. I remember having one year where
Speaker 1: I was really upset by them, like I had loved
Speaker 1: them and then suddenly was like that's loud and I'm
Speaker 1: against it. Yeah, I've come back around now, but for
Speaker 1: a long time I was. I was certainly the person
Speaker 1: who was like, I don't want to be here when
Speaker 1: the fireworks start UNA for the record, Yeah, yeah, most
Speaker 1: dogs I've encountered shared my feeling. I think I finally
Speaker 1: evolved beyond dog stage. So Henry the eighth and Ann
Speaker 1: BERLEYN had a daughter, Elizabeth, Yeah, somewhat famous. Yes, it
Speaker 1: became Queen of England and uh sat on her thorn
Speaker 1: for many years throne throne. Sorry, it was just misreading
Speaker 1: my notes, but no, Elizabeth obviously one of the most
Speaker 1: influential um monarchs of all time. Really yeah, and she
Speaker 1: she loved the sparkles. She did she she she created
Speaker 1: a position for its Firemaster of England. Um, it would
Speaker 1: be I think it was after in the ruling of
Speaker 1: James the First when that position came along with the knighthood.
Speaker 1: At any rate, you had people who suddenly really wanted
Speaker 1: to pursue the craft, to become the best at it,
Speaker 1: in order to land this cushy job of being the
Speaker 1: fire Master of England, because you would imagine that comes
Speaker 1: with some sweet you know, bonuses like money. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so a lot of people were trying new and different
Speaker 1: things to kind of impress the queen. Yeah. Yeah. According
Speaker 1: to some accounts, one of the things you might expect
Speaker 1: to see at a true, really outrageous display would be
Speaker 1: a dragon with paper mache scales that was loaded up
Speaker 1: with fireworks so that it would breathe fire. It would
Speaker 1: appear to be breathing fire, and sometimes they would have
Speaker 1: more than one, and then you would have dragon fights, yes,
Speaker 1: and then maybe one of the women's up catching on
Speaker 1: fire and the other one is slightly less on fire,
Speaker 1: and so that's the one that wins. Um. But they
Speaker 1: would battle one another. And so you read about this
Speaker 1: kind of stuff, you're like, wow, these these had to
Speaker 1: be pretty spectacular. And then you also think, remember they
Speaker 1: had no automated way this. There was probably some poor
Speaker 1: jerk who had a match stick or some form of
Speaker 1: torture something that was lighting this stuff manually and then
Speaker 1: trying to get the heck away from it before he
Speaker 1: burnt up. Yeah, or possibly a couple of guys on
Speaker 1: the ground like with sticks holding these things up. I'm
Speaker 1: a little bit terrified about the entire concept, but but yeah, no,
Speaker 1: they were very impressive. Shakespeare even wrote wrote about them
Speaker 1: in some of his plays, Right, Romeo and juliet There
Speaker 1: is a quote that says, these violent delight have violet ends,
Speaker 1: and in their triumph die like fire and powder, which
Speaker 1: as they kiss consume. Now, in that case, of course,
Speaker 1: he's referring to the lover's Romeo and Juliette, and the
Speaker 1: passion they have for one another, and he's likening it
Speaker 1: to a fireworks display, which you know, has been a
Speaker 1: pretty powerful image that has been repeated at nauseum ever since.
Speaker 1: The whole thing where the two lovers kiss and then
Speaker 1: you see the fireworks going off in the background very much.
Speaker 1: It's interesting that it seems to have originated with Shakespeare,
Speaker 1: as many so many things have. Also, fireworks were deemed
Speaker 1: to be an illegal possession for regular citizens right around
Speaker 1: six five. Uh, yeah, that that's about when a certain
Speaker 1: persona now publicly known because of a certain movies comic book. Yes,
Speaker 1: guy Fox got into some trouble with the gunpowder plot. Yes,
Speaker 1: he was part of a conspiracy to blow up the
Speaker 1: houses of Parliament by storing something like thirty something casks
Speaker 1: of gunpowder underneath. They were going to tunnel underneath the
Speaker 1: Houses of Parliament that stuff in there and then light
Speaker 1: it and blow it up. And the conspirators were caught
Speaker 1: before they could execute their plan. And Guy Fox himself,
Speaker 1: who was not necessarily the ringleader, he was one of
Speaker 1: the members Um, was really made an example of in
Speaker 1: some of the most horrifying ways you can imagine. Now,
Speaker 1: granted he was playing on committing a terrible act, but
Speaker 1: they did a really terrible act him and drawn quartered
Speaker 1: And of course they had Guy Fox Day for you know,
Speaker 1: the early Guy Fox days involved lots of burning of
Speaker 1: Guy Fox and effigy Um. And then there's a whole
Speaker 1: story there that's amazing, but stuff he missed in history
Speaker 1: class would really be the best place to cover that.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure they have actually mean, I feel like
Speaker 1: it's likely. Yeah, these these days we have the charming
Speaker 1: anonymous masks based off exactly. So at that point it
Speaker 1: was made illegal for the common citizen to possess fireworks.
Speaker 1: The only people who are allowed were specifically given that
Speaker 1: that responsibility by the crown. So that's kind of the
Speaker 1: early early history. But let's talk about what's actually going
Speaker 1: on inside of firework. What is what is making it work? Well,
Speaker 1: this is mostly chemistry, but let's let's talk about black powder,
Speaker 1: since that is that is the basic what is going
Speaker 1: on here. So we talked about sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter
Speaker 1: or potassium nitrate. Uh, you might wonder what are these
Speaker 1: things actually doing within gunpowders. So sulfur and charcoal are
Speaker 1: acting as fuel, right, and the potassium nitrate is acting
Speaker 1: as an oxidizer. So oxidizers in this sense are the
Speaker 1: chemicals that fuel requires in order to burn. If you
Speaker 1: remember the great triangle of what is required to make fire,
Speaker 1: you have to have fuel, you have to have oxygen,
Speaker 1: and you have to have heat. Those are the three
Speaker 1: things that together will allow you to have fire. And
Speaker 1: if you're lacking any of those, you're not going to
Speaker 1: get it. If you have just oxygen and fal and
Speaker 1: but not heat, it's not gonna happen. Same thing with
Speaker 1: just oxygen and fire. You've got to have some fuel there.
Speaker 1: So oxydizers are chemicals that are really good at getting
Speaker 1: oxygen into the mix. Yes, And in fact, potassium nitrate
Speaker 1: is incredibly good at this. So let's look at these
Speaker 1: ingredients each on their own. If you look at just charcoal,
Speaker 1: which is essentially carbon and you want to try and
Speaker 1: burn it, if you were to light a match and
Speaker 1: just hold it to charcoal, it doesn't really ignite very well, yeah,
Speaker 1: kind of. It kind of smolders and smokes, and and
Speaker 1: if you get it hot enough, like it will start
Speaker 1: to burn. Certainly they'll start to glow, blow, doesn't. You
Speaker 1: don't get a lot of flame out of it. You've
Speaker 1: probably done this at home, perhaps on a charcoal grill,
Speaker 1: or when you have burned a log down to the coals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've got those those coals are that's charcoal that's just
Speaker 1: glowing because of the heat that's coming through. We'll talk
Speaker 1: about the actual mechanism of glowing a little bit later too.
Speaker 1: So again, you don't get a lot of ignition, not
Speaker 1: not in a lot of flame. It's certainly not explosive
Speaker 1: ignition yet, probably unless you've done something very strange, right,
Speaker 1: unless unless your charcoal has got some other funky ingredients
Speaker 1: in it, or I guess you've compressed it a lot.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm yeah, that would be incredible. Eventually you would
Speaker 1: get a diamond. So, but sulfur it burns at a
Speaker 1: lower temperature than charcoal does that carbon does. It ignites
Speaker 1: more easily, but not really at room temperature. So if
Speaker 1: you had a little crucible, let's say, a little ceramic
Speaker 1: crucible filled with some some sulfur, and you put a
Speaker 1: match to it, it wouldn't really light up. But again,
Speaker 1: if you were to heat it, it will start to melt,
Speaker 1: and then it will burn if exposed to even higher temperatures,
Speaker 1: and that gives off sulfur dioxide, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: not good to breathe in. It could irritate your lung.
Speaker 1: One of the many reasons why you shouldn't melt sulfur
Speaker 1: at home. Yeah. Yeah, these these things like charcoal that's
Speaker 1: fairly fairly benign as things go. Sulfur a little bit
Speaker 1: less so, uh, potassium nitrate less so than either of
Speaker 1: the other two. Yeah, this is what increases that rate
Speaker 1: of combustion significantly when it's added to a mixture of
Speaker 1: carbon and sulfur, again in the correct amounts. So when
Speaker 1: it's mixed properly, that combination willing nite and burn really
Speaker 1: really quickly. Um. And it is it is the of
Speaker 1: course the traditional oxidizer in this combination of stuff that
Speaker 1: goes into black powder, but lots of other things can
Speaker 1: be used, for example, potassium chlorate, potassium perchlorate, or barium
Speaker 1: nitrate and UH. As of twenty eleven, organizations from like
Speaker 1: Walt Disney Company to the U. S. Department of Defense
Speaker 1: have started looking at green alternatives to all of these oxidizers.
Speaker 1: UH and I say green, and you go, like, what
Speaker 1: you're making stuff explode? How green does it need to be?
Speaker 1: But the thing is is that um okay. So it
Speaker 1: turns out the dangerous chemicals can present health and environmental hazards.
Speaker 1: UM and potassium nitrate specifically is a really common ingredient
Speaker 1: in herbsides, Potassium chlorate is a hearsh ingredient in disinfectants.
Speaker 1: Potassium perchlorate can disrupt the production of hormones and the
Speaker 1: thyroid and harmon born babies, and a barium nitrate can
Speaker 1: interfere with heart and breathing functions. So none of that
Speaker 1: is good fun times and and so a lot of
Speaker 1: research has been put in recent years into trying to
Speaker 1: figure out better ways of burning stuff, yet that isn't
Speaker 1: releasing these chemicals into the environment and showering them over
Speaker 1: crowds of fawning onlookers, or you know, into your water supply,
Speaker 1: or for example, potassium chlorate is a great example. Potassium
Speaker 1: chlorate is this stuff a great example of a bad,
Speaker 1: bad ingredients as opposed to one that's green. Potassium chlorate
Speaker 1: ends up creating a more explosive burn than say, potassium
Speaker 1: nitrate does. Potassium nitrates already pretty impressive, but if you
Speaker 1: ever watch someone create potassium chlorate a mixture of sulfur,
Speaker 1: charcoal and potassium chlorate in the right amounts and then
Speaker 1: light it, it lights even, It burns even faster than
Speaker 1: the regular black powder mixture, and so it's often used
Speaker 1: in something called a burst charge, which we'll talk about later.
Speaker 1: But like you said, it leaves some pretty nasty stuff
Speaker 1: behind chlorate. If you look at that word chlorate, you
Speaker 1: realize that chlorine is one of those things that's involved
Speaker 1: in this, and that's one of the byproducts as you
Speaker 1: get this chlorine released as as one of the the
Speaker 1: remnants after the chemical reaction that happens when you ignite
Speaker 1: this stuff. Chlorine is not good stuff, folks. You don't
Speaker 1: don't want just pure chlorine all over the place it's
Speaker 1: it's toxic. So you know, that's one of those things
Speaker 1: where uh a lot more research needs to be done
Speaker 1: in order to make the stuff really safe. Right now,
Speaker 1: two things, sodium parietate and potassium parietate are starting to
Speaker 1: move into use as substitutes, more clean substitute for the
Speaker 1: traditional one, because the trick is that you have to
Speaker 1: find something that's going to facilitate this rapid burning. If
Speaker 1: you don't have that, then obviously you can't do the
Speaker 1: fireworks at least not the way we're accustomed to. Um.
Speaker 1: So we'll we'll, you know, hope that that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff gets further distributed throughout the entire industry so that
Speaker 1: we have a less uh you know, negative impact on
Speaker 1: the environment and potentially on on the viewers of fireworks
Speaker 1: displays or just the people who happen to live around
Speaker 1: those areas. Oh yeah, this this also goes into I mean,
Speaker 1: the Department of Defense wasn't involved in that because of
Speaker 1: the fireworks displays necessarily, so much as this is useful
Speaker 1: also for anything else that you're using gunpowder for for
Speaker 1: the Department of Defense as many things, and you know,
Speaker 1: trying to protect the lives of our munitions workers and
Speaker 1: also our our soldiers and troops and everyone else. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: I interrupt this episode of tech stuff to let you
Speaker 1: know there's going to be some messages followed by some
Speaker 1: more tech stuff. So how is it made? Don't try
Speaker 1: this at home, yes, do not. This is one of
Speaker 1: those things that if you are if you're part of
Speaker 1: a lab and the lab has the facilities to do it,
Speaker 1: and you can make it in small amounts. It's a
Speaker 1: very interesting process. But this is not something for you
Speaker 1: to ever try on your own because if you got
Speaker 1: the mixture either just right or just wrong, bad things
Speaker 1: can happen. But generally speaking, here's what the processes, and
Speaker 1: I'm not again going to explain the specific amounts. First,
Speaker 1: you would have to reduce each ingredient to find grains
Speaker 1: of powder, and you would want to do this separately.
Speaker 1: Right this, You don't mix them together first, So you
Speaker 1: get your charcoal and you mash it up so you've
Speaker 1: got charcoal powder. You get your sulfur. You make sure
Speaker 1: you you pound out any any clumps so that you
Speaker 1: just get a fine powder. Same thing with your saltpeter.
Speaker 1: You want to make sure all of that stuff is
Speaker 1: as fine as you possibly can make it. Then you
Speaker 1: mix those ingredients together with a little water or some
Speaker 1: other liquid. For example, and I'm not making this up,
Speaker 1: one of the liquids I saw was stale urine. Stale
Speaker 1: urine stale urine specifically stale Yes, I am not joking,
Speaker 1: because it allows for a more consistent burn. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, So anyway, you mix it in with this
Speaker 1: liquid to help these different ingredients bind together, Usually you
Speaker 1: have some sort of binding agent. What's some something that's
Speaker 1: going to help them stick together in the right in
Speaker 1: the right amounts. Saltpeter, as it turns out, was really
Speaker 1: soluble and it will fill in all those nice little spaces,
Speaker 1: and charcoal pretty easily. Charcoal has a lot of surface areas,
Speaker 1: so it's it's a good mix. Then you let the
Speaker 1: mixture dries, becomes kind of like a cake like mass.
Speaker 1: It's solidifying like a hard biscuit. Yeah, it's like a
Speaker 1: red velvet cake, right, Yeah, so it's it's much more
Speaker 1: dense also much more likely to explode than your traditional
Speaker 1: red velvet uses. You then crush this dry matt mass
Speaker 1: with something that will totally not cause sparks. Please, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't use any nothing that's gonna potentially create spark,
Speaker 1: so usually it's ceramic or non sparking metals or something
Speaker 1: along those lines of stone, just regular stone, not like
Speaker 1: Flynn steel, would be a terrible idea to turn it
Speaker 1: into a powder. Um. This is one of the reasons
Speaker 1: why it's challenging to make this stuff in huge amounts,
Speaker 1: particularly for someone who doesn't have like a powder mill
Speaker 1: at their disposal. They the accounts I read were especially
Speaker 1: for people who are like, uh, military recreationist people, people
Speaker 1: who create, uh they recreate like the famous battles, and
Speaker 1: they want to have black powder muskets. They're not firing
Speaker 1: musket balls, but they want to be able to have
Speaker 1: that big loud bang smoke um they talk about making
Speaker 1: us say, it's a little hard if you want to
Speaker 1: make more than say, ten pounds of the stuff at
Speaker 1: a time, and like, you know, keeping in mind that
Speaker 1: ten pounds of gunpowder, especially if it's in a compact container,
Speaker 1: it could be incredibly dangerous. I just had a very
Speaker 1: mild panic attack thinking about any of the people that
Speaker 1: I personally know who dress up in costumes and run
Speaker 1: around the woods firing fake guns at each They're having
Speaker 1: ten pounds of gunpowder at your disposal. Yeah, it's uh,
Speaker 1: it certainly is one of those things where you do
Speaker 1: need to know the best practices to safely handle this
Speaker 1: stuff because it really is incredibly dangerous. But at that
Speaker 1: point in this process, you're done. You've got your gunpowder.
Speaker 1: If you do want to make large quantities. How did
Speaker 1: those powder mills work that you were mentioning earlier? So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you usually you would have some sort of of bowl
Speaker 1: like surface, and then you'd have a grinding wheel that
Speaker 1: would be powered either by horsepower, manpower, or water wheel,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. So it's a mill, you know,
Speaker 1: the kind of mill that you would see for any
Speaker 1: other sort of thing, grinding grain, for example. And what
Speaker 1: you would do is you would you would mix all
Speaker 1: these ingredients together and then you would put that in
Speaker 1: the mill for it to grind up into the proper
Speaker 1: um fine powder that you would need to use as
Speaker 1: black powder. Again, you would have to make sure that
Speaker 1: all the equipment you had was not likely to cause
Speaker 1: a spark alright, wood or stone or something non spark making. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard, non sparkworthy. It's kind of hard to
Speaker 1: to put it into words. Properly it is incombustible. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's good. One other interesting feature that a lot of
Speaker 1: these powder mills had was that at least one wall,
Speaker 1: sometimes more than one, was specifically built weaker than the
Speaker 1: other walls. The other walls would support more of the
Speaker 1: structure's weight. H so that if everything in the factory exploded,
Speaker 1: it would be easier for people to get out well,
Speaker 1: or easier for firefighters to get in. Uh yeah, because
Speaker 1: I mean if you are caught inside that building when
Speaker 1: there's an explosion, there's probably parts of you got out.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, it's it was meant so that it could
Speaker 1: open up an easy pathway for any uh, reactionary measures measures,
Speaker 1: whether that's putting out fires or you know, dealing with
Speaker 1: the aftermath. I mean, you didn't necessarily have people inside
Speaker 1: these things all the time while they're grinding with any
Speaker 1: but it was meant as this way. It's like, let's say,
Speaker 1: if you have it as a water wheel, you know
Speaker 1: it means you're near a source of water, running water,
Speaker 1: you might have the wall that is closest to the
Speaker 1: running water blowout, So that way, if there is a fire,
Speaker 1: you can you've got the water right there, so you
Speaker 1: can start a bucket brigade type thing. Now that's why
Speaker 1: I kind of had a face upall moment thinking about
Speaker 1: that one. But now that you mentioned it, really that's
Speaker 1: I sort of want all of my buildings to be
Speaker 1: structurally weaker on one side. I mean, nothing else that
Speaker 1: I could just man right out of anything that would
Speaker 1: be fair. Yeah, there are so many times where I
Speaker 1: just think that I need to have the Jonathan shaped
Speaker 1: dust cloud and then the wall like the Jonathan shaped
Speaker 1: hole in the wall where I've made my escape. So
Speaker 1: these days, we don't have so many water wheels kicking
Speaker 1: around in large factory facilities. We do have some machine
Speaker 1: versions that will do the crushing, but again it's really
Speaker 1: tricky because you have to make sure that that machinery
Speaker 1: is not going to have any kind of sparking element
Speaker 1: to it. So, in other word, the motors can't be sparking,
Speaker 1: not just the rollers or whatever. So you have to
Speaker 1: make sure that the materials you're using the surface and
Speaker 1: the rollers that are doing the crushing are not going
Speaker 1: to create any sparks, and furthermore, that they're going to
Speaker 1: be cool enough to not risk igniting it. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So it's It's one of those things that really took
Speaker 1: a lot of of effort to get it right so
Speaker 1: that it could be created safely, or at least as
Speaker 1: safely as possible. Accidents still happen. I mean, you've probably
Speaker 1: heard of accidents, whether they were in facilities that were
Speaker 1: processing black powder or a fireworks warehouse, These things do happen.
Speaker 1: So it really drives home the fact that you've got
Speaker 1: to treat it with respect. Sure, sure, Okay, So once
Speaker 1: you've got your black powder, how do you assemble the
Speaker 1: fireworks themselves? Okay, so basically, and we'll talk more about
Speaker 1: this in in our part two about fireworks, but basically
Speaker 1: what you need to do is do it by hand
Speaker 1: because automated versions again tend to have equipment that could
Speaker 1: create a spark. And so you've most fireworks are are handmade,
Speaker 1: hand packed. So if you if you were to take
Speaker 1: a typical firework, like a big one one that's used
Speaker 1: in a professional display, these things tend to weigh several pounds,
Speaker 1: They can be in lots of different shapes. It all
Speaker 1: depends upon the effect you want. We'll talk about that
Speaker 1: in the next episode two. But if you were to
Speaker 1: cut it in half, you would see that you would
Speaker 1: have a core of this black powder, whether it was
Speaker 1: made with potassium nitrate or potassium chlorate or some other
Speaker 1: oxidizer involved, but the black powder would be at the core,
Speaker 1: and you would have these other little elements inside the
Speaker 1: firework that are meant to be projected outward after the
Speaker 1: core explode, all right, probably suspended in clay or something
Speaker 1: staple like that, right right, And then you would also
Speaker 1: have another at the base of your projectile. Uh, if
Speaker 1: you have in fact a two stage firework. We'll talk
Speaker 1: about the different options in the next episode. But in
Speaker 1: the base of your firework, you would also have a
Speaker 1: lift charge which would be ignited another little gunpowder puck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you would have that at the base of it,
Speaker 1: and that's what would provide it the energy to lift
Speaker 1: out of the mortar. The basically the tube you have
Speaker 1: to fire it off into the sky. So it's it's
Speaker 1: really a two chamber at least a minimum of two
Speaker 1: chamber approaches if you're using the traditional method of launching,
Speaker 1: although the mouse House has come up with a totally
Speaker 1: different way of launching fireworks that doesn't require that separate
Speaker 1: blast chamber. The lift chamber and that was part one
Speaker 1: of our two part episodes on fireworks. We will have
Speaker 1: part two tomorrow. Hope you enjoyed it. If you have
Speaker 1: suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff, you can let
Speaker 1: me know on on Twitter the handle that we use
Speaker 1: as tech Stuff hs W, or you can download the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app, which is free to use. You
Speaker 1: can navigate over to the tech Stuff podcast page and
Speaker 1: use little microphone icon to leave a voice message up
Speaker 1: to thirty seconds in length let me know what you
Speaker 1: would like to cover and again we'll have part two
Speaker 1: tomorrow and I'll talk to you again really soon. Y
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