Remember that scene towards the end of the Clark Gable and Sophia Loren film It Started in Naples when Gable’s character (Michael Hamilton) and Marietto Angeletti‘s character (Nando)shoot off all those fireworks on the pier in Capri? Angeletti’s character Nando is just a young boy, and you’re thinking, “that doesn’t look too safe for the kid.” But since Nando stole Michael’s Zippo earlier and was the only one with a lighter, it makes sense. Sort of. Anyway, if you don’t remember this scene, or this movie, it’s okay. It’s really not that good. But my point is … Fireworks are dangerous! NOVA, tonight at 7 p.m. Central on NPT and PBS stations nationwide, knows this, but also knows that they can beautiful, powerful and alluring.
Just in time for Friday’s Independence Day celebration, NOVA Fireworks! looks at the colorful history of pyrotechnics and reveals the chemical secrets that put the bang in the rocket and the fizz in the Roman candle. “Fireworks!” introduces a gallery of firework creators and pyromaniacs, and reveals how hi-tech firing systems are transforming public displays into a dazzling, split-second science.
The show’s companion website also has plenty of great resources, like “Name That Shell,” where you can watch video clips of fireworks bursting in air and test your knowledge of chrysanthemums, peonies, roman candles and palm trees; “Anatomy of a Firework,” where you can look at a firework from a pyrotechnician’s point of view, seeing a successful lift charge, black powder mix, time-delay fuse, bursting charge, and other essential ingredients; “Pyrotechnically Speaking,” where Dr. John Conkling, adjunct professor of chemistry at Washington College and former executive director of the American Pyrotechnics Association, describes what it is about fireworks that gets him, well, all fired up; and “On Fire (Hot Science),” a virtual laboratory where you can explore the basics of combustion, including how a fire ignites, what a flame is made of, and how burning molecules rearrange themselves.
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