Speaker 1: Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio. And how the tech
Speaker 1: are you well, folks. Originally I planned on having all
Speaker 1: new episodes this week, but I had forgotten that my
Speaker 1: vacation budded right up to the Fourth of July holiday
Speaker 1: here in the United States, and as such, we are
Speaker 1: going to have a couple of reruns. These are going
Speaker 1: to be my traditional reruns for this holiday, I think,
Speaker 1: because I think I did this last year too. But hey,
Speaker 1: if you want a little insight into Jonathan's Fourth of
Speaker 1: July celebrations, every Fourth of July, I sit down and
Speaker 1: I watched the musical seventeen seventy six. This is a
Speaker 1: heavily fictionalized telling of the drafting and then signing of
Speaker 1: the Declaration of Independence. It turns out in history there
Speaker 1: were way more musical numbers, because in seventeen seventy six
Speaker 1: they kind of they kind of stop for about two
Speaker 1: thirds of the movie, Like there's some of the beginning,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of the beginning, and then there's a
Speaker 1: little bit at the end and there's not a whole
Speaker 1: lot in the middle. It turns out that in actual
Speaker 1: history they sang and danced the whole time. But in
Speaker 1: order to celebrate that, we're going to listen to a
Speaker 1: classic episode tech Stuff Lights Some Fireworks. This is a
Speaker 1: part one of a two parter and this was when
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum, who hosts Brain Stuff and Other Stuff, she
Speaker 1: was a co host on the show. So I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoy this classic episode from July twenty third, twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: tech Stuff Lights Some Fireworks. I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: in just a minute. There's a lot of science there is.
Speaker 2: There's much, many much sciences.
Speaker 1: In fact, we say more science than tech when you
Speaker 1: get down to it.
Speaker 2: However, it's a technology of chemistry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is applied chemistry.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And there is UH. And we have demonstrated on the
Speaker 2: show previously that we like fire.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we did a full episode. Oh by the way,
Speaker 1: sorry we didn't talk about compression fire starters. I had
Speaker 1: it in my notes, did not fill it out, and
Speaker 1: then we were taken to task for it rightfully, So
Speaker 1: I would say, but we're gonna we're gonna be very thorough.
Speaker 1: As it turns out, with fireworks, because while I was
Speaker 1: thinking about it, you know, just covering the basics, the
Speaker 1: more I got into the chemistry, the more exciting it was,
Speaker 1: the more interesting it was, and the more I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm in for a penny, in for a pound if
Speaker 1: the government's going to see how I'm looking about, you know,
Speaker 1: how to make gunpowder and as we'll go all in,
Speaker 1: so we're going to talk all about it.
Speaker 2: Definitely one of those that were like, Okay, what interesting
Speaker 2: watch lists are we on this?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Week, at least three or four more.
Speaker 1: So we should probably define what a firework is for
Speaker 1: just just the purposes of framing the discussion, right, Ah.
Speaker 2: Sure, Well you know, at its base, I suppose it's
Speaker 2: something that explodes for fun.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's pretty much it. Firework is something that is
Speaker 1: explosive or combustible, and it's meant for display purposes, to
Speaker 1: create an impressive light display.
Speaker 3: Or noise noise exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You could get a firecracker, which is really meant to
Speaker 1: make a lot of noise, or you you might get
Speaker 1: a Roman candle, which doesn't make a lot of noise
Speaker 1: but is very impressive light show. And of course then
Speaker 1: there's all the stuff that also falls into the fireworks category.
Speaker 3: Including things like Sparkler's that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: We're mostly gonna be focusing on your traditional fireworks, the
Speaker 1: stuff that you would go and look up into the
Speaker 1: sky and see that.
Speaker 2: Stark displays that are launched from something into the air.
Speaker 1: Exactly, so big botty boom. Your common basic ingredients and
Speaker 1: fireworks are well, it's black powder, also known as gunpowder.
Speaker 3: You know, pretty pretty simple.
Speaker 2: Relatively simple. It's traditionally made from sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate,
Speaker 2: which back in yie old days was called saltpeter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and back in ye old days, he mostly got
Speaker 1: it from India, at least if you were in the
Speaker 1: Western hemisphere, you got it from India. In fact, I
Speaker 1: read an interesting article published in eighteen sixty one by
Speaker 1: the New York Times about the various powder mills, which
Speaker 1: we'll talk about a little bit in the United States,
Speaker 1: and essentially it was running down how the South didn't
Speaker 1: have enough powder mills for this Civil War thing to
Speaker 1: be a big deal. As it turns out, four more
Speaker 1: years later, they probably felt like that was maybe a
Speaker 1: little premature.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, that turned out to be less correct.
Speaker 1: I had hoped it was. Certainly, you know, I think
Speaker 1: it was an optimistic take on what ended up being
Speaker 1: a very trying time in US history. But we're going
Speaker 1: to focus on the fireworks. So speaking of history, looking
Speaker 1: at the history of fireworks, this is stuff of legend,
Speaker 1: as it turns out.
Speaker 2: Oh, certainly, because I mean, I guess that's what neither
Speaker 2: of us were around two to three thousand years ago
Speaker 2: to observe, and we don't have a real way back machine. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm really sorry, guys, we've been lying to you. It's
Speaker 2: just a special effect.
Speaker 1: It's a really special effect. It is.
Speaker 2: It is very special.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, if someone has not actually documented it in a
Speaker 1: way that is verifiable, we cannot in fact go back
Speaker 1: and say exactly what happened. But we can tell you
Speaker 1: what the legends are.
Speaker 2: Yes, there's a legend that over two thousand years ago
Speaker 2: in China, a chef, a chef, yeah, was mixing together
Speaker 2: some charcoal, some sulfur, and some saltpeter.
Speaker 1: And those were all ingredients that were found in field kitchens. Okay,
Speaker 1: so yeah, apparently just accidentally happened to measure these in
Speaker 1: the or mix these in the right amounts. Because it's
Speaker 1: not like you have equal parts of each ingredient. It's
Speaker 1: actually more precise than that. We aren't going to talk
Speaker 1: about that because I don't want you guys making gunpowder. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so don't try that at home.
Speaker 2: But this chef happened upon this recipe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, uh, discovered that if you compress it, like if
Speaker 1: you put it into a container of some sort, and
Speaker 1: then if it were to I don't know, come into
Speaker 1: contact with any kind of flame, it blows up. I
Speaker 1: don't know if that chef survived this discovery, because I
Speaker 1: don't even know if the chefs existed, So it's all
Speaker 1: up in the air really literally possibly depending upon where
Speaker 1: the gunpowder was. Now, if you look up the history
Speaker 1: of fireworks online, like if you were to actually go
Speaker 1: 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 2: And as like many other research topics on the internet.
Speaker 2: They all tell basically the same story and basically the
Speaker 2: same wording.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they without without.
Speaker 2: Any particular reference to anything real.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's no citation, right, Yeah, So what the legend
Speaker 1: is is that there was a monk in China named
Speaker 1: Li Chian who lived around quote a thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: That is always the way it's put, by the.
Speaker 2: Way, around a thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: It's never given a date. It just says around a
Speaker 1: thousand years ago. And so depending upon when this was written,
Speaker 1: you know, and anyway, so much so many different sources
Speaker 1: use the exact wording. I expect they all took their
Speaker 1: information from either the same source or they're just borrowing
Speaker 1: it from each other. It's just this big circle of
Speaker 1: people borrowing.
Speaker 3: 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 mixed a bunch of different kinds of
Speaker 1: stuff together and found lots of interesting things, not the
Speaker 1: elexir life.
Speaker 3: But as it turns out, they found out about gunpowder.
Speaker 2: Just kind of like a serve death. When you think
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 1: It can be certainly with the incorrect application. So the
Speaker 1: first firecracker was probably a parchment tube loosely filled with
Speaker 1: this mixture of saltpeter, sulfur, and willow charcoal. Willow charcoal,
Speaker 1: by the way, one of the more popular forms. As
Speaker 1: it turns out, you want to use softer woods to
Speaker 1: create the charcoal because the harder woods tend to create.
Speaker 3: Too much ash.
Speaker 1: I learned that while I was doing all this research. Now,
Speaker 1: once these things were invented, they started to spread throughout
Speaker 1: the world gradually, usually through trade. Sometime between twelve thirty
Speaker 1: five and twelve ninety A. D. Roger Bacon began to
Speaker 1: experiment with an early form of black powder. This was
Speaker 1: again stuff that had probably been brought to the Western
Speaker 1: world through trade rates. Yeah, mostly through Arabic traders. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Most likely the story.
Speaker 1: Goes that Marco Polo brought some over, but it's much
Speaker 1: more likely that it was Arabic traders well before Marco
Speaker 1: Polo's journeys.
Speaker 2: But at anyway, Bacon's work would lead to the development of
Speaker 2: what we know as gunpowder today.
Speaker 1: Yes, he would sort of refine this mixture, finding the
Speaker 1: right proportions of mixing these ingredients together. To get something
Speaker 1: that would work very well if you wanted to, you know,
Speaker 1: launch something at somebody, like say a cannon ball.
Speaker 2: Sure, because if you mix all of these things together
Speaker 2: you get a good bright flash, and if you compress
Speaker 2: them beforehand, you get a big boom as well.
Speaker 3: Yep, yep.
Speaker 1: Otherwise, like if you've ever seen those videos or films
Speaker 1: of people taking the old timey photographs with the flash powder,
Speaker 1: where it just it just lights up, and that was
Speaker 1: how they created a flash since they didn't have the
Speaker 1: capacitors to make a flashing light bulb. That's what gunpowder does.
Speaker 1: If 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: exactly so that really is how it just burns really
Speaker 1: really quickly. Now, the gunpowder industry and fireworks industry are
Speaker 1: very closely linked together. Improvements in developing gunpowder and the
Speaker 1: methodology for producing it were ported over to work in
Speaker 1: fireworks as well, and early fireworks displays were developed in
Speaker 1: China and India for religious festivals. There aren't really written
Speaker 1: accounts of how these fireworks spread throughout the world. But
Speaker 1: again we think that Arabic traders probably brought this stuff
Speaker 1: over into Europe and the Europeans said, Wow, that's amazing.
Speaker 2: That's awesome, let's blow stuff up here too.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in fact, for a long time they were importing
Speaker 1: this stuff from the East, and in fact would even
Speaker 1: hire experts from the East to come and do the
Speaker 1: displays in Europe. It would only be in the late
Speaker 1: Middle Ages early Renaissance when you'd start seeing Europeans try
Speaker 1: and take on this responsibility themselves. Now, by the Italian Renaissance,
Speaker 1: fireworks creators began to experiment with adding extra ingredients to
Speaker 1: mixtures to produce different colors of light, so for example,
Speaker 1: adding copper to create blue light. We'll talk more about
Speaker 1: adding color to fireworks a bit later.
Speaker 3: So the thing is, if you want to learn.
Speaker 1: More about what the displays back in the Middle Ages
Speaker 1: were like, there are only a few accounts. A lot
Speaker 1: of the though come from England, because it turns out
Speaker 1: the English were bananas over this stuff. The Italians and
Speaker 1: Germans were working really hard on improving fireworks technology, and
Speaker 1: the English were enjoying the heck out of it. Lauren
Speaker 1: and I will be back to talk about some fireworks
Speaker 1: in just a moment. So one of the accounts says
Speaker 1: that during the wedding of Henry the Seventh also known
Speaker 1: as Henry Tudor and Elizabeth of York in fourteen eighty 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. Same
Speaker 1: is true for Henry the eighth wedding and Bolin, which
Speaker 1: was a wife number two. I think I think she
Speaker 1: had a good head on her shoulders, not for long.
Speaker 3: Spoiler alert.
Speaker 1: James Anthony Froud wrote that there were quote wild men
Speaker 1: casting fire and making a hideous noise end quote, which
Speaker 1: I think is a fantastic description of fireworks. Yeah. When
Speaker 1: I was a kid, I hated them because I didn't
Speaker 1: like loud noise, and even just seeing the fireworks burst
Speaker 1: in the sky made my anxiety levels go up because
Speaker 1: I knew a loud noise was coming right right.
Speaker 2: I remember having one year where I was really upset
Speaker 2: by them, like I loved them and then suddenly was
Speaker 2: like that's loud and I'm against it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've come back around now, but for a long time
Speaker 1: I was. I was certainly the person who's like, I
Speaker 1: don't want to be here when the fireworks.
Speaker 2: Start agrees with you.
Speaker 1: For the record, Yeah, yeah, most dogs I've encountered shared
Speaker 1: my feeling. I think I finally evolved beyond dog stage.
Speaker 2: So Henry the Eighth and Ann Berlin had a daughter.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth, Yeah, somewhat famous. Yes, became Queen of England and
Speaker 1: sat on her thorn for many years. Thrown thrown, Sorry,
Speaker 1: I was just misreading my notes. But no, Elizabeth obviously
Speaker 1: one of the most influential monarchies of all time. Really, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and she loved the sparkles. She did.
Speaker 2: She created a position for it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, fire Master of England. It would be.
Speaker 1: I think it was after in the ruling of James
Speaker 1: the First when that position came along with a knighthood.
Speaker 1: At any rate, you had people who suddenly really wanted
Speaker 1: to pursue the craft and 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.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so a lot of people were trying new
Speaker 2: and different things to kind of impress the Queen that juncture.
Speaker 1: Yeah, according to some accounts, one of the things you
Speaker 1: might expect to see at a truly outrage display would
Speaker 1: be a dragon with paper machede scales that was loaded
Speaker 1: up with fireworks so that it would breathe fire.
Speaker 3: It would appear to be.
Speaker 1: Breathing fire, and sometimes they would have more than one,
Speaker 1: and then you would have dragon fights, yes, and then
Speaker 1: maybe one of the women's up catching on fire and
Speaker 1: the other one is slightly less on fire, and so
Speaker 1: that's the one that wins. But they would battle one another.
Speaker 1: And so you read about this kind of stuff and
Speaker 1: you're like, wow, these had to be pretty spectacular. And
Speaker 1: then you also think, remember, they had no automated way
Speaker 1: of doing this. There was probably some poor jerk who
Speaker 1: had a match stick or some form of torch or
Speaker 1: something that was lighting this stuff manually and then trying
Speaker 1: to get the heck away from it before he burnt up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or possibly a couple guys on the ground like
Speaker 2: with sticks holding these things up. I'm a little bit
Speaker 2: terrified about the entire concept, but yeah, no, they were
Speaker 2: very impressive. Shakespeare wrote about them in some of his plays, right.
Speaker 1: Yep, Romeo and Juliet. There is a quote that says,
Speaker 1: these violent delights have violent ends, and in their triumph
Speaker 1: die like fire and powder, which as they kiss consume. Now,
Speaker 1: in that case, of course, he's referring to the lovers
Speaker 1: Romeo and Juliet and the passion they have for one another,
Speaker 1: and he's likening it to a fireworks display, which you know,
Speaker 1: has been a pretty powerful image that has been repeated
Speaker 1: ad nauseum ever since. The whole thing where the two
Speaker 1: lovers kiss and then you see the fireworks going off
Speaker 1: in the background very much. It's interesting that it seems
Speaker 1: to have originated with Shakespeare, as many so many things have. Also,
Speaker 1: fireworks were deemed to be an illegal possession for regular
Speaker 1: citizens right around sixteen oh five.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's about when a certain persona yeah, now publicly
Speaker 2: known because of a certain movie and comic book series. Yes,
Speaker 2: guy Fox got into some trouble with the gunpowder plot.
Speaker 1: Yes, he was part of a conspiracy to blow up
Speaker 1: the Houses of Parliament by store something like thirty something
Speaker 1: casks of gunpowder underneath. They were going to tunnel underneath
Speaker 1: the Houses.
Speaker 2: Of Parliament, will barro all that stuff in there.
Speaker 3: And then light it and blow it up.
Speaker 1: And the conspirators were caught before they could execute their plan,
Speaker 1: and Guy Fox himself, who was not necessarily the ringleader,
Speaker 1: he was one of the members, was really made an
Speaker 1: example of in some of the most horrifying ways you
Speaker 1: can imagine. Now, granted he was playing on committing a
Speaker 1: terrible act, yes, but they did a really terrible act
Speaker 1: him and drawn quartered And of course they had Guy
Speaker 1: Fox Day for you know, the early Guy Fox days
Speaker 1: involved lots of burning of Guy Fox and effigy. And
Speaker 1: then there's a whole story there that's amazing, but stuff
Speaker 1: you missed in history class would really be the best
Speaker 1: place to cover that. And yeah, sure they have Actually.
Speaker 2: I think I feel like it's likely. Yeah, these these
Speaker 2: days we have the charming anonymous masks.
Speaker 3: Yes, based off off Guy Fox exactly.
Speaker 1: So at that point it was made illegal for the
Speaker 1: common citizen to possess fire wars. It's the only people
Speaker 1: who are allowed were specifically given that responsibility by the crown.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of the early early history. But let's
Speaker 1: talk about what's actually going on inside of firework is
Speaker 1: what is making it work?
Speaker 2: Well, this is mostly chemistry, but let's let's talk about
Speaker 2: black powder, since that is the basic what is going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we talked about sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter or
Speaker 1: potassium nitrate. You might wonder what are these things actually
Speaker 1: doing within gunpowder. So sulfur and charcoal are acting as fuel, right,
Speaker 1: and the potassium nitrate is acting as an oxidizer. So
Speaker 1: oxidizers in this sense are the chemicals that fuel requires
Speaker 1: no order to burn. If you remember the great triangle
Speaker 1: of what is required to make fire, you have to
Speaker 1: have fuel, you have to have oxygen, and you have
Speaker 1: to have heat. Those are the three things that together
Speaker 1: will allow you to have fire. And if you're lacking
Speaker 1: any of those, you're not going to get it. If
Speaker 1: you have just oxygen and fuel but not heat, it's
Speaker 1: not gonna happen. Same thing with just oxygen and fire.
Speaker 1: You've got to have some fuel there.
Speaker 2: So oxidizers are chemicals that are really good at getting
Speaker 2: oxygen into the mix.
Speaker 1: Yes, and in fact, potassium nitrate is inredibly good at this.
Speaker 1: So let's look at these ingredients each on their own.
Speaker 1: If you look at just charcoal, which is essentially carbon
Speaker 1: and you want to try and burn it. If you
Speaker 1: were to light a match and just hold it to charcoal,
Speaker 1: it doesn't really ignite very well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it kind of smolders, yeah, and smokes.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And if you get it hot enough, like it will
Speaker 2: start to burn, certainly, it'll.
Speaker 1: Start to glow glow, doesn't. You don't get a lot
Speaker 1: of flame out of it.
Speaker 2: You've probably done this at home, perhaps on a charcoal grill,
Speaker 2: or when you have burned a log down to the coals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you've got those those coals, or that's charcoal that's
Speaker 1: just glowing because of the heat that's coming through. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about the actual mechanism of glowing a little bit
Speaker 1: later too. So again, you don't get a lot of ignition,
Speaker 1: not in a lot of flame. It's certainly not explosive ignition.
Speaker 2: Yet, unless you've done something very strange.
Speaker 1: Right, unless your charcoal has got some other funky ingredients
Speaker 1: in it.
Speaker 2: Or I guess you've compressed it a lot.
Speaker 3: Maybe I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be incredible eventually you would get a diamond. So,
Speaker 1: but sulfur it burns at a lower temperature than charcoal
Speaker 1: does that carbon does. It ignites more easily, but not
Speaker 1: really at room temperature. So if you had a little crucible,
Speaker 1: let's say, a little ceramic crucible filled with some sulfur
Speaker 1: and you put a match to it, it wouldn't really
Speaker 1: light up. But again, if you were to heat it,
Speaker 1: it'll start to melt and then it will burn if
Speaker 1: exposed to even higher temperatures, and that gives off sulfur dioxide, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, not good to breathe in. No, it
Speaker 1: can irritate your lungs.
Speaker 2: One of the many reasons why you shouldn't melt sulfur
Speaker 2: at home.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, these things like charcoal that's fairly, fairly benign as
Speaker 1: things go, sulfur a little bit less.
Speaker 2: So, potassium nitrate less so than either of the other two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is what increases that rate of combustion significantly
Speaker 1: when it's added to a mixture of carbon and sulfur,
Speaker 1: again in the correct amounts, so when it's mixed properly,
Speaker 1: that combination will ignite and burn really really quickly.
Speaker 2: And it is the of course, the traditional oxidizer in
Speaker 2: this combination of stuff that goes into black powder, but
Speaker 2: lots of other things can be used, for example, potassium chlorate,
Speaker 2: potassium perchlorate, or barium nitrate, and as of twenty eleven,
Speaker 2: organizations from like Walt Disney Company to the US Department
Speaker 2: of Defense have started looking at green alternatives to all
Speaker 2: of these oxidizers. And I say green, and you go,
Speaker 2: like you're making stuff explode? How green does it need
Speaker 2: to be?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: But the thing is is that okay? So it turns
Speaker 2: out the dangerous chemicals can present health and environmental hazards,
Speaker 2: and potassium nitrate specifically is a really common ingredient in herbicides.
Speaker 2: Passium chlorate is a harsh ingredient in disinfectants. Potassium perchlorate
Speaker 2: can disrupt the production of hormones and the thyroid and
Speaker 2: harm unborn babies, and barium nitrate can interfere with heart
Speaker 2: and breathing functions. So none of that is good fun times.
Speaker 2: And so a lot of research has been put in
Speaker 2: recent years into trying to figure out better ways of
Speaker 2: burning stuff. Yeah, yeah, that isn't releasing these chemicals into
Speaker 2: the environment and showering them over crowds of fawning onlookers
Speaker 2: or you know, into your water supply or etcetera.
Speaker 1: For example, potassium chlorate is a great example. Potassium chlorate
Speaker 1: is this stuff a great example of a bad ingredient
Speaker 1: as opposed to one that's green.
Speaker 3: Poassium chlorate ends.
Speaker 1: Up creating a more explosive burn than say, potassium nitrate.
Speaker 4: Dots.
Speaker 1: Poassium nitrates already pretty impressive. But if you ever watch
Speaker 1: someone create potassium chlorate a mixture of sulfur, charcoal and
Speaker 1: potassium chlorate in the right amounts and then light it,
Speaker 1: it lights. It burns even faster than the regular black
Speaker 1: powder mixture, and so it's often used in something called
Speaker 1: a burst charge, which we'll talk about later. Okay, But
Speaker 1: like you said, it leaves some pretty nasty stuff behind chlorate.
Speaker 1: If you look at that word chlorate, you realize that
Speaker 1: chlorine is one of those things that's involved in this,
Speaker 1: and that's one of the byproducts is you get this
Speaker 1: chlorine released as one of the remnants after the chemical
Speaker 1: reaction that happens when you ignite this stuff. Chlorine is
Speaker 1: not good stuff. Folks don't want just pure chlorine all
Speaker 1: over the place. It's it's toxic. So you know, that's
Speaker 1: one of those things where a lot more research needs
Speaker 1: to be done in order to make this stuff really safe.
Speaker 2: Right now, two things, sodium parietate and potassium parietate are
Speaker 2: starting to move into use as substitutes more clean substitutes
Speaker 2: for the traditional one.
Speaker 1: Because the trick is that you have to find something
Speaker 1: that's going to facilitate this rapid burning. If you don't
Speaker 1: have that, then obviously you can't do the fireworks, at
Speaker 1: least not the way where accustomed to. Yeah, so well,
Speaker 1: you know, hope that that kind of stuff gets further
Speaker 1: distributed throughout the entire industry so that we have a
Speaker 1: less you know, negative impact on the environment and potentially
Speaker 1: on the viewers of fireworks displays. Are just the people
Speaker 1: who happen to live around those areas.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this this also goes into I mean, the
Speaker 2: Department of Defense wasn't involved in that because of the
Speaker 2: fireworks displays necessarily, so much as this is useful also
Speaker 2: for anything else that you're using gunpowder for, right, for
Speaker 2: the Department of Defense as many things, and you know,
Speaker 2: trying to protect the lives of our munitions workers and
Speaker 2: also our soldiers and troops and everyone else.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, we got a little bit more to say about
Speaker 1: fireworks and then yeah, I'll wrap things up.
Speaker 3: So how is it made?
Speaker 1: Don't try this at home, yes, do not. This is
Speaker 1: one of those things that if you are if you're
Speaker 1: part of a lab and the lab has the facilities
Speaker 1: to do it, and you can make it in small amounts.
Speaker 1: It's a very interesting process. But this is not something
Speaker 1: for you to ever try on your own because if
Speaker 1: you got the mixture either just right or just wrong,
Speaker 1: bad things can happen. Yes, but generally speaking, here's what
Speaker 1: the process is, and I'm not again going to explain
Speaker 1: the specific amounts. First, you would have to reduce each
Speaker 1: ingredient to fine grains of powder, and you would want
Speaker 1: to do this separately, yes, right, you don't mix them
Speaker 1: together first. So you get your charcoal and you mash
Speaker 1: it up. So you got charcoal powder, You get your sulfur.
Speaker 1: You make sure you pound out any clumps so that
Speaker 1: you 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.
Speaker 3: All right, I sh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, So anyway, you mix it in with
Speaker 1: this liquid to help these different ingredients bind together. Usually
Speaker 1: you have some sort of binding agent, want some something
Speaker 1: that's going to help them stick together in the right
Speaker 1: in the right amounts. Saltpeter, as it turns out, is
Speaker 1: really soluble and it'll fill in all those nice little spaces,
Speaker 1: and charcoal pretty easily. Charcoal has a lot of surface area,
Speaker 1: so it's it's a good mix. Then you let the
Speaker 1: mixture drys becomes kind of like a cake like mass.
Speaker 3: It's solidified, like a hard biscuit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like a red velvet cake.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it's it's much more dense, also much more
Speaker 1: likely to explode than your traditional red velvet.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 1: You then crush this dry mass with something that will
Speaker 1: totally not cause sparks.
Speaker 3: Please. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You don't use any nothing that's gonna potentially create a spark.
Speaker 1: So it's ceramic or non sparking metals or something along
Speaker 1: those lines of stone, just regular stone, not like flint steel,
Speaker 1: because that'd be a terrible idea to turn it into
Speaker 1: a powder. This is one of the reasons why it's
Speaker 1: challenging to make this stuff in huge amounts, particularly for
Speaker 1: someone who doesn't have like a powder mill at their disposal.
Speaker 1: The accounts I read were especially for people who are
Speaker 1: like military recreationists.
Speaker 3: People who create.
Speaker 1: They recreate like the famous battles, and they want to
Speaker 1: have black powder muskets. They're not firing musket balls, but
Speaker 1: they want to be able to have that big, loud
Speaker 1: bang of smoke they talk about. Making us say, it's
Speaker 1: a little hard if you want to make more than say,
Speaker 1: ten pounds of the stuff at a time, like you know,
Speaker 1: keeping in mind that ten pounds of gunpowder, especially if
Speaker 1: it's in a compact container, could be incredibly dangerous.
Speaker 2: I just had a very mild panic attack thinking about
Speaker 2: any of the people that I personally know who dress
Speaker 2: up in costumes and run around the woods firing fake
Speaker 2: guns at each other, having ten pounds of gun powder
Speaker 2: at your disposal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it certainly is one of those things where you
Speaker 1: do need to know the best practices to safely handle
Speaker 1: this stuff because it really is incredibly dangerous. But at
Speaker 1: that point in this process, you're done. You've got your
Speaker 1: gun powder.
Speaker 2: If you do want to make large quantities, how did
Speaker 2: those powder mills work that you were mentioning earlier.
Speaker 3: So yeah, usually you would have some sort of.
Speaker 1: Bowl like surface, and then you'd have a grinding wheel
Speaker 1: that 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 you would mix all these
Speaker 1: ingredients together and then you would put that in the
Speaker 1: mill for it to grind up into the proper fine
Speaker 1: powder that you would need to use as black powder. Again,
Speaker 1: you would have to make sure that all the equipment
Speaker 1: you had was not likely to cause a spark right.
Speaker 2: Wood or stone or something very.
Speaker 1: Uh, non spark making. Yeah, it's hard, non spark worthy.
Speaker 1: It's kind of hard to put it into words properly.
Speaker 2: It is incombustible, Yes, that's good.
Speaker 1: One other interesting feature that a lot of these powder
Speaker 1: mills had was that at least one wall, sometimes more
Speaker 1: than one, was specifically built weaker than the other walls.
Speaker 1: The other walls would support more of the structure's weight.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, so that if everything in the factory exploded,
Speaker 2: it would be easier for people to.
Speaker 1: Get out well or easier for firefighters to get in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean, if you are caught inside that building
Speaker 1: when there's an explosion, there's probably parts of you got out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it was meant so that it could open up
Speaker 1: an easy pathway for any reactionary measures measures, right, whether
Speaker 1: that's putting out fires or you know, dealing with the aftermath.
Speaker 1: I mean, you didn't necessarily have people inside these things
Speaker 1: all the time while they were grinding away anyway.
Speaker 3: But it was meant as this.
Speaker 1: Like, let's say, if you have it as a water wheel,
Speaker 1: you know, it means you're near a source of water,
Speaker 1: running water, you might have the wall that is closest
Speaker 1: to the running water blowout, so that way, if there
Speaker 1: is a fire, you can you've got the water right
Speaker 1: there there, so you can start a bucket brigade type thing.
Speaker 2: No, that's I kind of had a face palm moment
Speaker 2: thinking about that one, But now that you mention it,
Speaker 2: really that's I sort of want all my buildings to
Speaker 2: be structurally weaker. On one side. I mean, if nothing
Speaker 2: else that I could just cool aid Man right out
Speaker 2: of anything.
Speaker 3: That would be fair.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are so many times where I just think
Speaker 1: that I need to have the Jonathan shaped dust cloud
Speaker 1: and then the wall, the Jonathan shaped hole in the
Speaker 1: wall where I've made my escape.
Speaker 2: So these days we don't have so many water wheels
Speaker 2: kicking around in large factory facilities.
Speaker 1: We do have some machine versions that will do the crushing,
Speaker 1: but again, it's really tricky because you have to make
Speaker 1: sure that that machinery is not going to have any
Speaker 1: kind of sparking element to it.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: So in other words, the motors can't be sparking, not
Speaker 1: just the rollers or whatever. So you have to make
Speaker 1: sure that the materials you're using the surface and the
Speaker 1: rollers that are doing the crushing are not going to
Speaker 1: create any sparks.
Speaker 2: And furthermore, that they're going to be cool enough to
Speaker 2: not risk igniting it.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So it's one of those things that really took a
Speaker 1: lot of effort to get it right so that it
Speaker 1: could be created safely, or at least as safely as possible.
Speaker 3: Accidents still happen.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've probably heard of accidents, whether they were
Speaker 1: in facilities that were processing black powder or a fireworks warehouse.
Speaker 3: These things do happen.
Speaker 1: So it really drives home the fact that you've got
Speaker 1: to treat it with respect.
Speaker 2: Oh sure, sure. Okay, So once you've got your black powder,
Speaker 2: how do you assemble the fireworks themselves?
Speaker 1: Okay, so basically, and we'll talk more about this in
Speaker 1: are part two about fireworks, But basically what you need
Speaker 1: to do is do it by hand because automated versions
Speaker 1: again tend to have equipment that could create a spark,
Speaker 1: and so most fireworks are handmade, hand packed. So if
Speaker 1: you were to take a typical firework, like a big
Speaker 1: one one that's used in a professional display, these things
Speaker 1: tend to weigh several pounds, They can be in lots
Speaker 1: of different shapes. It all depends upon the effect you want.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that in the next episode two. But
Speaker 1: if you were to cut it in half, you would
Speaker 1: see that you would have a core of this black powder,
Speaker 1: whether it was made with potassium nitrate or potasium chlorate
Speaker 1: or some other oxidizer involved, but the black powder would
Speaker 1: be at the core, and you would have these other
Speaker 1: little elements inside the firework that are meant to be
Speaker 1: projected outward after the core explodes, all right.
Speaker 2: Probably suspended in clay or something stable like.
Speaker 1: That, right, right, And then you would also have another
Speaker 1: at the base of your projectile. If you have, in
Speaker 1: fact a two stage firework. We'll talk about the different
Speaker 1: options in the next steppisode.
Speaker 3: But at the base of.
Speaker 1: Your firework you would also have a lift charge which
Speaker 1: would be ignited from.
Speaker 2: The first right, another little gunpowder puck.
Speaker 1: Yeah, 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 really
Speaker 1: a two chamber at least a minimum of two chamber
Speaker 1: approaches if you're using the traditional method of launching.
Speaker 4: Okay, that was the classic episode text Stuff Lights Some Fireworks,
Speaker 4: originally published July twenty third, two thousand and fourteen. Hope
Speaker 4: you enjoyed it, and tomorrow we will have part two,
Speaker 4: and then after that it should be back to business
Speaker 4: as usual. I don't anticipate anything else interrupting the normal
Speaker 4: production of tech stuff for a while. I think my
Speaker 4: next vacation isn't until December maybe, so I think we
Speaker 4: should be good.
Speaker 1: But you know these things, you can never really predict
Speaker 1: how one week is going to go based upon the
Speaker 1: previous week. Hope you are all well. I hope you
Speaker 1: had a great time. While I was vacating, I went
Speaker 1: to a bigfoot museum. Wish I could talk about that,
Speaker 1: but it's not really tech stuff. But anyway, I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.