Oh Look! A Sparkly Thing!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: It’s almost July 4, and for so many summers as a kid, while we waited for the big Zionsville fireworks display (a classic, with firetrucks standing by in the grassy meadow), we played at home with sparklers.

We waved them, we bent the ends and spun them, we wrote our names in the sky with them. We chased each other with them.

SO FUN!

I found a website called TOPS Malibu, (which I don't know what is), that says “It is believed that the creator of sparklers was a Greek architect by the name of Callinicos of Heliopolis, who invented them around 670 AD. He made a firework weapon called a cheirosiphon, which was first designed to fend off arriving enemy ships. It was a hand-held firework that could shoot flames towards the enemy. It was also known as Greek Fire, which you may have heard about on History Channel…”

We certainly shot flames toward the enemy. With five siblings, each one of us had at least four enemies. 

Not to mention zapping the mosquitoes, organizing firefly parades, and seeing if we could put a burning sparkler into someone's mustardy hotdog, or experimenting whether you could toast marshmallows over them.

According to Chemical Safety Facts, “A sparkler is a type of hand-held firework that burns slowly and emits colored flames, sparks and other effects. A sparkler is typically made from a metal wire coated with a mix of potassium perchlorate, titanium or aluminum, and dextrin. Aluminum or magnesium also helps create that familiar white glow.”

A site called “Compound Interest” goes on to say “When heated, these oxidiser compounds decompose, and when they do so they all, regardless of their identity, produce oxygen as one of the products of the decomposition.

The production of gasses during the decomposition reaction also forcibly ejects bits of the burning powdered metal from the sparkler. This causes the sparkler’s effect, as they continue to burn, and react with oxygen to produce metal oxides.”

Forcibly ejects bits of burning powered metal.

SO FUN!

On YouTube, Chemical Kim says they can burn at 1200 F (648.89 C.) AND that if you try to put them out in water, they still burn because of…something. I forgot. Oxides. So forget about dousing them, it won’t work.

SO FUN!

The McGill University Office for Science and Safety says: The solid-fuel boosters of the Space Shuttle were essentially giant sparklers. They were filled with a mixture of aluminum powder and ammonium perchlorate held together with a rubber binder. The intense glow emanating from the booster at lift-off was caused by the extremely exothermic reaction of aluminum with the oxygen provided by the decomposing perchlorate. By Newton’s third law, for every action, there is an equal but opposite reaction. The Shuttle blasted upward as the hot combustion products emerged from the tail of the boosters.

EXACTLY. The “extremely exothermic” reaction was what made them so irresistible. Thank you, Callinicos!

Sparklers are illegal in Massachusetts, and in my super-quick survey, it looks like they may be legal everywhere else in the US.

Reds and Readers, do you have sparkler memories?