Name: 花火師だけど質問ある？ | Tech Support | WIRED Japan
Uploaded: 2025-02-09T09:25:35.000Z
Duration: 16 min 39 s
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I'm pyrotechnician Patrick Serrana, here to answer your questions from the internet.

At ActileFN asks, how do fireworks go up?

No, fireworks don't have a small fan that's underneath them.

So when you put the firework into the tube, the first thing that ignites on the bottom is the lift charge, which sends the firework up into the air, and then it explodes once it reaches its maximum altitude.

Typically, a firework will go up 70 feet per inch of shell.

Professional fireworks displays could be either 3 inch, 4 inch, 5 inch, or 6 inch.

So if you have a 3 inch firework shell, it'll go up 210 feet into the air.

And that's determined by the lift charge inside of it.

There's other methods of putting the firework up into the air these days.

Disney's using pneumatic, or air devices, to blow the firework up into the air instead of using an actual explosion.

So that cuts down on a lot of the smoke that you see during a firework display.

At B Aaron asks, I wonder how fireworks are designed.

This is a cutaway model of a large display shell.

The first thing that happens is the lift charge explodes, which creates a lot of gas and fire and pushes the entire shell out of the tube.

At the same time the lift charge gets ignited, the time fuse starts its path up towards the burst charge.

Now depending on how big the firework shell is, that'll determine how long the time fuse is before it gets all the way up to the burst charge, which then will explode the firework shell in the sky.

This is an example of a smiley face shell.

They lay the stars in a pattern to create exactly what shape they want, and then when the shell goes up into the sky and it bursts, those stars spread outwards.

Now this is why you don't always see the smiley face perfect.

Because it's a round ball that's traveling through the sky, you might see the firework upside down, you might see a straight line like this, or if you're lucky you might actually get the full smiley face.

At Athena Bread asks, why do fireworks smell so gross?

So I think that would be a matter of opinion.

If you asked myself or other pyrotechnicians, I think we would say, he who has smelt the smoke is never free again.

The sulfur is one of the main components in black powder, which consists of potassium nitrate, sulfur, and charcoal.

Without the sulfur, the black powder wouldn't be able to burn as rapidly, and it would more fizzle out rather than create a rapid explosion of fire.

When the sulfur burns, it creates a chemical called sulfur dioxide, which produces that nasty rotten egg smell that you're smelling.

At JohnnyV453 asks, how do electronic firing systems work for firework displays?

So electronic firing systems have three main components.

The remote, the module, and the igniter, or the e-match.

The modules will go out in the field near to the fireworks.

They typically go about nine feet from the fireworks themselves, because that's the average length of an e-match.

Each terminal will represent a different firework that will go off.

So this terminal might go at the three second mark of the show, but this terminal might go for the finale.

When the button is pressed on the remote, the signal will go to the module, then igniting the end of the electric match tip, which will then ignite the firework.

Electric matches have a special chemical composition on the end of them that when voltage goes through them, it creates a bright flash and spark, which ignites fireworks.

There's also a protective shroud that usually goes over the match tip because they're friction sensitive to make sure that you don't accidentally have an issue where it'll ignite due to friction.

Now, electronic firing systems can work in two ways.

You can either do it manually, where you press one button at a time and each fire will go off or you can choreograph it on the computer.

At Bainton Ward asks, firework shows are so funny because like for the first few minutes you're like, whoa, that's cool.

And then for the next 10 minutes you're like, so that was the finale, right?

So to capture the audience's attention in a professional firework display, we like to build in little sequences into the display that create false finales or mini finales.

And then we continue with the body of the display until we reach the actual finale.

One of the ways we do that is with choreographing software to ensure that you don't have any dead air or what we call sky puke is where you have too much fireworks in the sky.

The lines along the bottom of the screen represent fireworks along a timeline.

You could put down a musical track and then each of the fireworks could be set off right at a certain beat or note of the song.

So these lines show the height of the firework and where they will break.

Certain fireworks will go up to 210 feet.

This display is for a custom wedding, which was two songs long.

So this one happens to be a six minute custom pyromusical.

Finale 3D is the most widely used choreographing software for fireworks.

This software can also be used as a simulation for customers.

We can make a video of the fireworks ahead of time and then show it to the customer to see if that's what they want based on the music and the choreographing that we design.

At IceEagle76 asks, where are most fireworks made?

There's one province in China where almost all the fireworks are made.

That's where all of the black powder is sorted.

That's where all of the casings are made.

That's where all of your consumer fireworks and your display fireworks that you see on the 4th of July are packaged and processed before they're shipped out to other countries.

At Dave from up north asks, can fireworks only fire at a certain height, meaning you are safe to fly above and be safe?

When you're doing a professional fireworks display, you do have to notify the FAA and you have to get a notice to all airmen, which is called the NOTAM.

A NOTAM notifies the FAA and all planes flying in the area that there will be a firework display from a certain time up to a certain altitude.

We'll also try to reach out to any pilots in the area and they'll warn us, hey, if you fire at us, we'll fire back.

We do a lot of fireworks shows near Air Force bases.

The Air Force might have flying maneuvers and stuff that they can't reschedule.

So what we have to do at that point is pause the firework display, make sure that it's safely out of our airspace, and then we could resume the firework display afterwards.

At CyFryEbooks asks, how do fireworks get their colors?

The main component in fireworks is black powder.

Black powder consists of charcoal, sulfur, and potassium nitrate.

And this, when burned, creates more of an orange fire.

Black powder has different consistencies.

The finer black powder burns rapidly and it's used for things like a burst charge in the sky where you need a big, rapid explosion, whereas the coarser black powder would be used for more of a lift charge where you need a lot of fire to create the burst up in the  To create the reds, the greens, the blues, and the whites, you add coloring agents such as barium, strontium, copper.

It's a coloring agent that's added to black powder.

It's what's used to create the red color.

Some of the more difficult colors to do are bright whites, which create a lot of magnesium, titanium.

And this powder would be an aluminum powder, which creates the loud bangs and explosions in salutes or reports.

So aluminum is the main component in that, and it creates the bright flash and the loud noise.

I think a lot of people that were there agreed.

It's definitely one of the most spectacular firework shows they've ever seen.

Firing systems all run off of electricity.

So it could have been a surge of electricity.

It could have been some sort of malfunction, which the computer decided it was going to fire all cues at once.

There's lots of things that could go wrong during a professional firework display.

The mortar could detonate inside of the firework tube, which could create an explosion, sending all the other firework tubes around it to lay in a manner where when they blow off, the fireworks not pointing straight up in the air anymore.

It could be pointing towards the audience, the spectators, the crew.

And one thing I could say about pyros is when we make a mistake once, we tend to not make it again.

Hoop asks, Actually, purple has been around for a decent amount of time.

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花火師だけど質問ある？ | Tech Support | WIRED Japan

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