How do they make fireworks that assume a specific shape when they go off?
In: Technology
Shapes like a circle are easy. You place small charges with delayed fuses around a bigger charge that blows them away from the center point equally in all directions. Shapes like a heart or other more complex ones need the central “spreader” charge to be specially shaped or have some sort of interference so that the smaller delayed charges that makes the shape are the right distance away from the center when the pop.
If you are referring to the light display after the Biden speech last night, those where lights on drones flying in various formations in the foreground and fireworks in the background.
Try to draw a cat on a balloon, then blow up the balloon, the cat will assume the same shape but will get bigger. So the fireworks works the same.
Those types of fireworks are usually spherical (basically a big ball that gets launched out of a mortar)
In the the center of the ball is an explosive charge, and surrounding that explosive charge are hundreds of smaller spheres called ‘stars’ that burn brightly when set on fire. Depending on what each of the stars are made of they can be made to burn with a different colour.
So, if you want a particular shape, you just arrange the stars in that pattern. When the explosive charge in the middle goes off, the stars get ignited and the explosion throws them all outwards at the same speed.
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