- This is the biggest... hottest... and most explosive- - Oh my god. - Video on fireworks ever, covering everything from
the invention of gunpowder to how fire can burn underwater, how fireworks are made,
the colors, shapes, fuses. To how they're launched. We'll even see what it's like
to fly through fireworks. (fireworks popping) Mr. Beast has got nothing on this. This video was sponsored by KiwiCo. More about them at the end of the show. (drone buzzing) - I cannot believe the precision with that huge camera on there. Gene is gonna try to fly the FPV drone actually like through the
fireworks as they explode. You ready Gene? - I think So. - Gene makes the channel called Potato Jet and he does tech reviews, but also lots of very filmic stuff. - [Gene] Lot of- - Lot of drone work. - Lately a lot of drone stuff. - Okay. - A lot of fast drone stuff.
- FPV drones. - Like this one.
- this one. Are you willing to fly
this into a firework as it's exploding? - That's the goal. If I can catch it, that's the hope. But we set it up just for that.
So I think we could get it. (drone buzzing) - The first recorded instance
of something like a firework occurred in China over 2000 years ago where people would get a piece of bamboo with the ends closed and they
would throw it in a fire. So as it heated up, everything inside would get hot and expand and eventually burst, creating this bang, which they thought
scared off evil spirits. Then they developed black powder and they put black
powder inside the bamboo to make an even bigger bang. That was much more impressive. I wanna test out the earliest
known recipe for gunpowder. It involves three ingredients that you can find out in nature. The first is potassium nitrate, which actually comes
from bat and bird guano. Once they poop in the cave
and it dissolves in water, you get these white crystals coming out. The second ingredient is sulfur. These yellow crystals you can
just find on the side of hills or around thermal vents. And the third ingredient is honey. That is the major fuel for the gunpowder. Now I'm gonna mix this all up. Looks like it could be frosting. So yummy. Earliest known recipe for gunpowder. What people observed was when
they heated up this mixture, it would spontaneously catch fire. I have no idea how big of
a thing this is gonna be. This is only about a gram of it, so I don't think it's gonna be huge. As we heat up that very
primitive gunpowder, we should see it burst into flames. It's gotta be close. Here we go. Here we go. Yes, we have made gunpowder. Now that took a long time
before we saw the fire. So why is that? Well, honey contains a lot of water and that's gonna slow down the rate at which this is gonna start to combust. People figured out that a
better fuel was charcoal. There are three things
you need to make fire, fuel, oxygen and heat. In most fires, the oxygen
comes from the air, but in gunpowder, the oxygen is supplied by
one of the solid ingredients. The potassium nitrate
gives you the oxygen. It's KNO3, so there's a
lot of oxygen in here. And then the charcoal provides
the fuel, that carbon. Charcoal is basically just carbon, but it works better than other
forms of carbon like graphite because it contains
these microscopic pores and that enables the
reactants to mix much better. They can actually get inside those pores. So if you mix potassium
nitrate with the fuel, charcoal and add heat from a lighter, you should have all the
ingredients you need to make fire. So the question is, will this burn? It seems like little bits
of it are catching on fire and just like sparking up from there. But the trouble with this reaction is that it has a high activation energy. So it needs a lot of heat to get going. Whoa. There it goes. That is cool. (cheerful music) I can see little balls of molten stuff in the crucible there. That is awesome. So we do have oxygen and fuel
and we can get that reaction, but it's just not a
very explosive reaction. This is where the sulfur comes in. Sulfur starts reacting
with the other ingredients at lower temperatures, and
those reactions give off heat. The sulfur is gonna act like kindling. It's gonna create that initial bit of heat that the potassium nitrate
needs to really break it open and then, you know, everything can react. So that's what I wanna do,
I wanna try to mix sulfur, potassium nitrate and charcoal, which is like your quintessential
recipe for gunpowder. And the amounts that you need of this have been pretty stable
for like 800 years, which is about 75% potassium
nitrate, 10% sulfur, and 15% charcoal. Those are the right mixtures so that you have just the right
number of each type of atom to fully react and release
the most energy possible. So I wanna test how long it
takes for fire to burn down about a meter of this homemade gunpowder. Let's let her rip. There it goes. Hey, it's going so slow. (suspenseful music) Come on, you can do it. Go, go, go, go, go. Wow, it made it to the end. You know what I think the problem is the granules of charcoal that I've got and these grains of potassium
nitrate, even the sulfur, they're all a bit big. So to actually get that
reaction to happen fast, it's not really working. So what I wanna do is compare that to store bought gun powder from, you know, a factory that's actually
ground up all those particles to be really tiny. So all the reagents are
really close together. Oh my... - Whoo! - That is impressive. (suspenseful music) (laughs) Yes. That is gunpowder. That makes mine look so amateur. The chemical reaction that occurs in the combustion of
gunpowder is complicated, to say the least. But a number of the
products formed are solids, and that's why burning gunpowder
creates a lot of smoke. The neighbors have gotta be
looking at this and being like- - That is so...
- What the... The thing about gun
powder is if you burn it when it's just exposed to the air, it doesn't really explode. And I think of gunpowder as explosive. But in order to see that, what
you have to do is confine it. Because when you confine gun powder, you increase the concentration
of all the reagents. They don't just blow away from each other when they catch fire. So they're forced into closer
proximity, so they react more. Plus you trap more of the heat, so the reagents get moving
faster, they have more energy, and so they can react more readily. So I put 10 grams of
gunpowder in a cardboard tube and taped it shut. (explosion pops) Okay, that's better. But it wasn't as big of a
bang as I was hoping for. Well, it was a bit more
of a pop than than a bang. Maybe we need a tighter vessel, I think. So I'm gonna use some
fiber reinforced tape to strengthen the container, and then we should get a bigger bang. (explosion booms)
Ooh! - It went right past me. (explosion booms) - It's more of a bang.
That's a bit more like it. Here I have 20 grams of black powder. So I guess the question is
with twice the black powder, do we get twice the bang? Here we go, everyone get back. (explosion booming) This is essentially what a firework is. I mean, fireworks consist of a shell with a lot of gunpowder inside. - So, this is an inert shell. It's colorized so that you can see the
individual pieces better. A real shell, everything
in here would be black because it would be primed
or covered with black powder. - Actually a note about terminology. For a long time the terms
gunpowder and black powder were used in interchangeably. But these days the formula
for gunpowder has changed to make it smokeless. So what's used in fireworks is called, at least in the US, black powder, to distinguish it from
modern smokeless gunpowder. Just know that in this
video we'll use both terms to mean basically the same thing. - The shell itself is made out a cardboard and what looks like and
is a form of paper mache with craft paper and a glue. And you go around and around once you put the two
shell halves together. - Is that like the standard
size you'd see when you go out? - So on a 4th of July display, you'll see anything
from two and a half inch up to five inch typically. In most cases, six inch and above are reserved for locations
that you have a huge property, you're out in some desert shoot site or on a barge somewhere. But they can go even bigger
than this, up to 12 inch, 16 and even larger in very special occasions. This is the hemisphere for a
16 inch diameter aerial shell. - That is a huge firework. The biggest aerial firework
ever was 1.44 meters wide, and it weighed about the same as a car. (speaker gasping) - Ah-ooh-ooh-ooh!
- Whoooh! - Whoa. (all laughing) - To launch a firework into the air, the way it's done is
with more black powder. - In a typical shell, you're gonna have a baggie of black powder that's underneath the shell, and that acts to fire the
shell out of the mortar to the 800 feet in the air, which is what this eight
inch shell would go to. Shells as large as say a 16 inch, those can use literally
pounds of black powder underneath them. - To ensure the shell goes straight up. It's placed in a big plastic
tube called a mortar. - A pyro technician gets two bangs for every one the audience does. You get a bang when the mortar fires and then a bang when the shell explodes. (explosions booming) And it's literally like a cannon, shooting a cannon ball in the air. So the audience doesn't get
to hear or see or feel that, but the pyro crew does. (explosions booming) (audience cheering) - Does everything burn up
before it reaches the ground? - The internal contents, yes. So all the stars, the
burst, all of that stuff, the casing will come down in pieces. That's why we have a fallout
zone is what we call it. Or the exclusion zone, where only the crew is
allowed with all their PPEs because you do get debris that comes down. It literally sounds like rain at the end from all of the debris from that finale, shells going off all at once. - How often do they malfunction? - It's rare, but it does happen. You'll have a wooden rack with a few HDPE, high density polyethylene mortars in it. And that particular
material is meant to expand and split from the energy
of a malfunctioning shell versus explode and throw
shrapnel everywhere. - We actually experienced
an incident like this with the biggest shell
we had set to launch. Okay, in three, two, one. (explosion pops) Oh, oh. That one did not look like it... (explosion booms) Oh!
(laughs) That's what happens when
a firework doesn't lift. - But because we follow all
the rules and regulations at a professional display, it's usually the crowd going, whoa. And the crew going, whoa. (explosion booms) - Oh my God. (both laughing) - And then the show goes on is typically what happens
after a few safety checks when something like that goes on. - Thankfully everyone was safe because we could trigger
the fireworks remotely from outside the blast radius. But igniting explosives safely
has long been a challenge. - In the mining industry, their delay method back then was to literally sprinkle
out a trail of black powder through the mine to give
them a delay to the dynamite. - The simplest fuse just
consists of cotton string that's been soaked in black powder and then allowed to dry out. This is known as black match. It burns well, but pretty slowly. - That alone would burn two
to three seconds an inch. But once you encase it in craft paper, that's literally all this is, you change that burn rate
from a couple seconds an inch to anywhere from 30 to
a hundred feet a second. - This has the same effect as containing the black powder. It traps in the heat and reagents, so the reaction goes much faster. - This is actually how we
shoot our finale so fast. We're not actually pushing
buttons that quickly. - This type of fuse is
appropriately known as quick match. Now, before I'd ever seen
quick match in action, it was suggested that I
try to race the signal down the fuse. What I'm gonna do is light this little piece
of black match right here, and then I'm gonna try to race
the signal to the other end. But still, I was not
prepared for what came next. (suspenseful music) (explosions popping)
Ah! Jesus, what the heck was that? (suspenseful music)
(explosions popping) You are kidding me. You didn't tell me it was gonna do that. The force of the combustion products causes the quick match
to whip around wildly. It's crazy how much just
containing the reagents and containing the heat from
the reaction accelerates it. It certainly burns much
faster than the black match without the paper. (explosion pops)
Ah! Man. Every time, every time that gets me. One problem with these basic fuses is they aren't waterproof. Even though they contain
the fuel and the oxidizer, so they don't need the
oxygen and the air to burn, they do need heat and
water is just too good at conducting the heat away from the fuse. So it snuffs out the reaction. And it fizzles out. The same problem occurs with road flares. I thought since the flame comes
out with such high pressure, it might be able to stay lit under water. Three, two, one. (water splashes) And it did for a little while, but eventually the water got
in there and stole the heat. So I think that the
water is putting it out by pulling the heat away from it so it doesn't have enough
energy to keep burning. (water burbling) You bring it out. Come on, come on. Ah. - Wait, look. - He-ey! (both laugh) - Ooh! - And it's... (water burbling) There are special flares made
for underwater applications, but even those have similar problems. (water burbling) You can see the gaseous
combustion products being released here and
bubbling to the surface. And while this flare lasted longer, the water still eventually put it out. Come on. Why did that go out? But it is possible to
make a waterproof fuse. - So this is your traditional visco fuse. You're gonna see this in a lot
of your consumer fireworks. (calm music) - Very big firework store. (cheerful music) I feel like we have to get this, spins? - Yeah. - And it makes fire? - Yeah. - I'm excited about this one. Here we go in three, two, one. - [Mike] It's really got a powder core with a fiber wrap to it. (fireworks popping) (laughing) And it's typically lacquer coated. So these fuses are typically waterproof. (explosion popping) - Whoa! (water burbling) Wow! (laughs) That was impressive. Fuses are not only used
to light fireworks, they are a core component
inside a firework. - So that quick match flashes really quick down into the black
powder lift that ignites. And while it's pushing the
shell out of the mortar, it lights the time fuse. So this is what would
actually be in the shell to give you the time delay. From the time the lift charge fires to the time the shell hits
apogee and explodes in the sky. You know, it's about a
quarter inch in diameter and is really a black
powder core rigid fuse compared to the more flimsy visco type. - It's really important
that the time delay fuse keeps the combustion contained inside it so the firework only
explodes when you want it to, at the very peak of its trajectory. So we tested it underwater. Do you think it's waterproof? - Should be. - All right. It's taking its time. There we go. That looks like a firework type fuse. - [Mike] These function by not spitting any fire out the side so that the shell doesn't
get lit prematurely. - That's smart. - [Mike] So you should only
see it spit out the end once it's made it's all the way through. - What's containing it? Like what kind of material
is containing it in there? - [Mike] Well, there's a number... There's weaves of fibers in
there and a layer of asphalt that really provides that waterproofing. - So you can kind of see how the signal is progressing. You can see how the fire's
progressing through there. 'Cause obviously it's getting hot. Some of the gaseous
products are coming up. Oh, is it gonna come out? Was that it? - [Mike] That was it. - That is all that is needed to ignite the core of a firework. (both laugh) - So after that time fuse hits its end, it'll light a piece of black match that'll then flash into the burst charge. So that's what's represented
by this blue material, which is typically rice hulls
or something similar to that coated with black powder. - What are ri... Oh rice hulls. - Yes. Rice hulls, not holes, sorry. - I was like they're making
rice holes like donut holes. - The reason we coat rice hulls is because you get a very granular powder in the center of the shell now, which allows the flame
to propagate very quickly through the shell, igniting
everything simultaneously, creating that significant
over pressure very quickly to blow the shell open. So a traditional peony shell would be your most basic of fireworks, where these stars would literally
be lining the hemisphere and then you'd have
your burst in the middle and that would give you a very symmetrical
round sphere in the sky, your traditional firework that you see. - But it's just interesting to think that when you see a firework go off, you know, all those little points of light are about that size. - [Mike] Yeah. - But they look... I mean I would say that
they look bigger, right? 'Cause they're so bright, I guess. - Yeah. (drone whistling) - So fast. - How fast does this thing go? - Pretty quick and it
is definitely trickier when it's dark like this. - Okay, can you see anything? - [Gene] Once I go start looking here, I'm like, I'm not sure. - How do you get focused to
something that's not there yet and you're not quite sure where
it is or where anything is 'cause it's all pitch black? - 'Cause I basically have
locked exposure on this. And we can at least see
how the exposure is. - Taking off. (drone whistling)
(fireworks popping) - Yes. Amazing. Blue. (calm music) - Oh shoot, okay. - Oh, dang.
- FPV's down. - [Gene] Oh dang. I didn't realize I was
so close to the ground. All right, hold on. - I just wanna see what
this looks like, you know, I wanna check this out. So. Whoa, that is cool. I dig that. These stars are made of black powder mixed with chemicals to give
them different properties. - [Mike] So brocade crown star would be the big bushy gold tail that you would see in the sky. So imagine a big glittering gold shell. (indistinct chatters) - I could actually see the
little pieces coming off and glowing pretty bright right now. - [Mike] Now, imagine those leaving a tail as they fly through the sky. It's a really spectacular effect. - This is gonna be blue. Ah. Often the chemicals mixed into the stars are used to create specific colors. - [Mike] Each of these stars would be coated with a primer composition, which is a really fine black powder. The reason for that is a
lot of color compositions take more heat to ignite, so they have a higher
ignition temperature. So by coating with black
powder, with that primer, you're ensuring ignition of all the stars, which then transfer the fire
to that color composition. (calm music) - And then it started taking off on you. (imitates firework) That's cool. I like that. (calm music) Jeez it's bright. The colors of fireworks are actually thanks to quantum mechanics. An element absorbs energy
from the combustion raising an electron to
a higher energy level. And there are only certain
transitions which are allowed. So when the electron drops back down to a lower energy level,
it gives off light with a specific energy of that transition, which corresponds to a particular color. Some elements are particularly well-suited to create certain colors. So as the copper ions go in there, they absorb energy from the
fire, from the combustion, and then the electrons drop back down to a lower energy level and they give out that
blue light predominantly. And that's why we get
such a great blue color. What a thing of beauty. This is just a little interjection because I was looking at our flame tests and the copper salt tests, you know, anywhere you look, copper
fireworks are meant to be blue, like bright blue, but those
flame tests look kind of green. And so I didn't really
know what was going on, but I was sitting here
playing with my kids with the KiwiCo flame test kit. I know like they did sponsor this video, but didn't tell me to put
a section like this in. But what I found is that, okay, I'm using a copper salt
here and it starts out green and then if you leave it for
a while, come zoom in here, it starts to get blue. Oh, look at that blue. To get the beautiful blue color.
I think you need more heat. I think it's a higher
temperature that we need that we didn't achieve in our
flame tests out in the field. Here we got some calcium
chloride. Oh yeah. Oh, that is a beautiful orange. Look at that. Here we're getting some potassium chloride to give us some violet. I'm not seeing too much violet, but maybe just a little. Barium chloride. Of course, that's just small scale. Our pyro technician mixed
up some color salt and fuel in a mortar. - [Mike] What's in there is
about two gallons of methanol with boric acid on this one. (explosion booms) (both laughing) And copper(II) chloride on this one. - Three, two, one. Fire.
(explosion booms) Yeah! That was awesome. (calm music) That is the beauty of quantum mechanics. The electron transitions that give rise to the
color of fireworks are, at least in my opinion, way cooler than colored smoke bombs. So the combustion products here are solid, and that's why they make so much smoke. In this case, there's just dye in the
smoke to give it its color. Yes. To make so-called ghost shells, the stars are coated in
layers of different chemicals, which allows them to
change color mid-flight. - So assuming your shell
construction was very uniform, your casing, all your
stars are the same mass, you're gonna get a very
uniform explosion in the sky. So it's really as simple as how you lay out the stars in the shell and it'll break in that
pattern in the sky. - So what's your favorite patterned? - Jellyfish are pretty neat. If you've ever seen a jellyfish, it really looks like a jellyfish. You get the dome and then you get tentacles
coming out the bottom. - That sounds amazing. - [Mike] Yeah. - Do they just do it by changing the color and position of the stars up here? Like how do you get a
dome and then tentacles? - If this was the shell and you'd have another half this way, only the top half would be covered- - Would be fully covered. - And that would be your dome. And then you'd have a couple larger stars to create the large tentacles
that come out the bottom. - Ah. These days fireworks
aren't usually triggered by lighting a fuse by hand,
but by pushing a button. - Each one of these buttons would correspond to an
individual firing circuit going out into the field. - The button sends current down the wire to an electric match. A little filament in the match heats up, triggering a chemical reaction. - [Mike] Which then spits fire into whatever you're trying to light. - [Gene] Yeah, I think it's just... - Dust in the motors? - I think so. This might be a pretty quick repair. - We are about to have a fireworks finale in the middle of nowhere in the pitch dark for like a minute. And we're gonna try to
fly FPV drone through it. So what does it actually
look like to be in the middle where all the fireworks
are exploding in three, two, one. (drone whistling)
(fireworks popping) - Thank you. (fireworks popping) (upbeat music)
(fireworks popping) Wow. Can we get some light on the ground here? (laughing) - That was insane. - The fireworks finale
triggered my car alarm. - They were like two
times where I was like, "I'm not sure if I'm upside down or not, but I gotta hold this shot." Okay, so - [All] Whoa. (hopeful music) - Oh man. Right through
them, right around them. Just parked right down into that. (all laughing) Whoa, that is so wicked. - Dude. - Yeah, there we go. (all laughing) - You're upside down. - [Gene] Right there. (hopeful music) I was just chasing everything. (hopeful music) - Fireworks are this perfect
combination of chemistry, light, and sound. If their purpose is to banish bad spirits, I'd say they achieve it. (fireworks booming) (squicky sound) Hey, this video was sponsored by KiwiCo. You know, every time a KiwiCo
crate shows up at our house, my kids get really excited. (screaming) What is it guys? - I love me this one. - You light it on fire and it
makes different color flames. (gasps) - The different chemicals you put on? - Uh-huh. And that's because they know what's inside is a hands-on project that
they get to build with me. And the building is a lot of fun and playing with it
afterwards is even better. From my perspective, the best part is that my kids
are learning about science, technology, engineering and design while playing and having fun. And I think that is the best way to learn. So the way it works is that each month KiwiCo delivers a crate right to your door and inside is everything you
need to complete the project. And I mean everything. So there are no additional
trips to the store. We've been getting crates
for three years now. So we've built lots of different projects and they're all high quality. I got to tour KiwiCO's headquarters, so I saw how their crates
are designed by experts and then tested with kids
before they're ever sent out. They're also really good value. Most KiwiCo subscriptions work
out to around $20 per month. They have nine different product lines targeted at different age groups. Everything from newborns up to 14 plus so your kids can grow with
KiwiCo just as mine have. I think my favorite thing is
that working on these projects has become something that we do together. Every month there is this thought starter and an invitation to spend
some quality time together and it just arrives on our doorstep and I really appreciate that. So if you wanna try it out, go to kiwico.com/veritasium
to get your first month free. Using my link, you're not
only getting a great deal, you're also helping to
support this channel. And if you want to purchase single crates, that's also an option
through the KiwiCo store. They make great gifts. So I wanna thank KiwiCo
for sponsoring this video and I wanna thank you for watching.
Hi OP, I just saw this also popping up on my YouTube feed. Thanks for sharing this also on r/Pyrotechnics !