This month's meeting focused on fireworks, just in time for everyone to be able to answer their grandchildren's tricky questions. We learned how the Chinese developed gunpowder and then used it for entertainment by filling hollow bamboo stems with gunpowder, sealing the ends, and putting the assembly in or over a fire. When the temperature rose high enough to initiate a reaction, the tube would explode with a loud bang.
We have come a long way since then. We were shown how complicated modern-day display fireworks have become. The modern firework consists of a break, a cylindrical or spherical unit to contain the individual components until ignition, black powder for the explosive reaction, two or more fuses—the main fuse and time-delayed fuses for the second and subsequent parts of the explosive action—stars to produce the multicolored bursts, a lift charge to propel the firework to a required height, and the launch tube to send it in the desired direction.
The fireworks are manually assembled, placing all the components almost one by one. It's easy to see how many fireworks are made in China with their access to cheap labor compared to Europe and the USA. We learned how the speed of gunpowder increases once it has reached a critical level of heat energy, and how the burning process can become more rapid by containing it in cartridge paper and inside a shell. Sometimes flash powder is introduced to make the firework go off with a really loud bang.
We learned how fireworks can burn underwater, but there isn't a big market in underwater displays.
For major displays, the fireworks are choreographed to ensure that they are fired electronically and in sequence. As music is broadcast to the audience, the firing sequence is scheduled to fit the music sequence to make a grand spectacle.
We also had a drone pilot flying his drone through multiple starbursts to show us what it was like close to the action. There was a hint of multi-level laser drone displays augmenting fireworks, and I suspect that in the future, there will be more of this as drones are more environmentally friendly since they can be reused and do not create the smoke and pollution of normal fireworks. When you realize that a simple 10-minute display in a local park will cost £2000 in fireworks, and a major display such as the London New Year's display will cost well over £4 million, you can see why alternatives are being considered.
We finished the meeting with a 12-minute video of the London New Year 2024 fireworks. Finally, if you click in the center of the picture below, you can open up the video to see 15 different rare fireworks.
(Note: Click the link below to to see the video. Web admin)