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# The Science Behind Fireworks and the Galaxy

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<!-- video src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/xqifFnsn.m3u8" -->
## Video: The Science Behind Fireworks and the Galaxy

[Watch (HLS stream): The Science Behind Fireworks and the Galaxy](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/xqifFnsn.m3u8) (1:28)

![The Science Behind Fireworks and the Galaxy](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/xqifFnsn/poster.jpg?width=720)

_Published 2015-07-01. How do fireworks work? The same way the universe does._


---

Jul 27, 2023 6:29 PM UTC

---

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### A Boom in Fireworks Sales

---


## Transcript

[ MUSIC ] Fireworks. Pretty exciting stuff. they've been around since the seventh century in China. What you might not know is that the different colors that we see are a result of different chemistries. You see if you want red, green, blue or yellow, that's strontium, barium, copper or sodium. If you want white, well that can be titanium or aluminum. So here I have a fireworks right here. So what's going on inside? Well inside of the element are atoms. And inside of the atom are electrons. And the electrons get really excited with all of the heat. Woohoo! But what happens is they can't handle that energy, so they give that energy off, and that energy comes off as light.

The light that we see. The different colors that come off as a result of different chemistries, we can think about actually as a fingerprint. So, astronomers use this to their benefit What they do is with their special telescopes they look at planets. They can see different colors and from the different colors they can sense what is in the environment. So you see fireworks are really interesting for us on earth but there also interesting for looking at the galaxy as well. [ MUSIC ]

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