Cheri Fields
Love them or hate them, fireworks are a major part of America’s Independence Day celebrations as well as for all kinds of festivities throughout the year and around the globe. What does it take to make such amazingly bright colors? God’s gracious gift of chemistry and more!
The Brilliant website has a good wiki on the history of developing fireworks as well as how they function.
The University of Pennsylvania has a fun article that walks you through the kinds of materials firework makers use to produce the various colors and how it works. Be sure to scroll to the end to see the infographic of the different colors and elements used.
If you were assigned to design a fireworks show to be safe and spectacularly timed, how would you do it? With mathematics! It takes an understanding of how to work with numbers to coordinate the launch schedule as well as to calculate a safe and beautiful flight trajectory for each rocket.
When creation scientists (or just a creation fan like me) watch a fireworks show, they can think about even more than all of these fascinating realities. We know that the reason chemistry and math work so reliably is because they are sustained by our faithful Creator God. He loves us, knows us, and chose to fill his universe with all kinds of ingredients just waiting for us to try our hand at fashioning things out of them.
While the same materials that propel a firework can be used to create deadly weapons, they are amazing sources of wonder and delight when used carefully for good purposes. Perhaps someday we can watch a fireworks display together when Jesus is earth’s king!
And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the LORD. Isaiah 2:3–5
