Fireworks Blog

Today I'm gonna talk about the Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang . He makes amazing drawings using Gunpowder burns and/or small explosions. He also makes amazing fireworks and explosive events, mainly using colored smoke artifacts. Image from Cai's Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/caistudio/ One of Cai's most famous projects is the " Sky Ladder " a ladder 1,650 feet tall raised by a hot air balloon to reach the skyes and ignited from bottom to top, creating an impressive visual effect. This project was dedicated to his 100 year old grandmother. There is a movie/documentary on Netflix about the Sky Ladder project and the life of Cai Guo-Qiang:  https://www.netflix.com/title/80097472 Please watch this amazing video of the Sky Ladder   Visit also Cai's official website for more information on his projects here .

Have you ever seen someone launching a fireworks rocket directly through their hands? This is the way we tradittionally launch rockets in my country - Portugal! This is a technique not only used in Portugal, but also in Spain and some Latin-America countries. The pyrotechnician holds the rocket with one hand and lights it with the other using a slow burning cotton cord or even a cigarette and that's it, let it go! Obviously this is a dangerous operation, but it is used for centuries and rarely accidents occur mainly because our rockets are well made, taking all the care to avoid injuries. By the operator, a crucial step is to let the rocket go, without trying to move it (or help it rise, it really doesn't need that). Usually, during shows or events where a lot of rockets must be lauched, there are two operators - one to light the rockets and another to help giving the rockets. Hand firing fireworks is allways exciting because you can feel the power near you. You must ...

Congrats to all the Americans for the America's Independence Day! Since 18th century, Americans celebrate this day and, as any other big celebration, there are Fireworks! Unfortunatelly, this year (2020) thigs were not so good and many places cancelled the public celebrations, but you can always celebrate with your own Fireworks. Take care and be happy! If you want to know a bit of history about this day, please read this post on History.  

This an important part of my relationship with Fireworks/Pyrotechnics - The famous Pyro Innovations website. I started learning about Fireworks by my own, watching fireworks shows near my hom, collectiong and investigating fireworks debries and dud (unexploded) shells or other artifacts and doing lots of experiments, but as soon I had access to internet for my first times, I have found this amazing website and learned much from it. I was passionate by their hand firing and shows setup videos you can watch in this page ( http://www.pyroinnovations.com/fireworks-videos.html ) Most of the site is foccused on training pyrotecnhicians and people that want to learn and become a pyrotechnician . Although the site is from the U.S.A. it is very useful for who wants to learn pyrotecnhics from any place of the World. They have a page entirely dedicated to learning the step by step to become a professional -  http://www.pyroinnovations.com/fireworkstraining.html Hope you enjoy a...

Last May 31, 2020, about 163 Japanese fireworks companies organized a project named "Cheer up Hanabi!" to level up the spirit of Japanese people because the current coronavirus pandemic. The companies choose a lot of places to display the fireworks at the same time so the people could see from their homes. There is no doubt that Fireworks are capable of raise the spirit and joy of people and I hope to see ideas of events like that all around the world. Congratulations to the organizers of this amazing event. For more information, pictures and videos, visit the website of the project:  https://www.cheeruphanabi.com/  or their Facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/cheeruphanabiproject/  (there are lot of videos there). Image fom the project's Facebook page ( https://www.facebook.com/cheeruphanabiproject/ )

Yesterday, May 30 2020 ,  Nasa and SpaceX launched Crew Dragon Demo 2 Mission to the ISS. I know this is not a blog about space exploration, but I decided to talk a little about this fact because one of the most important things that powers this two areas is the same - Rockets ! The fuel is not the same, but the principle of this milenar technology that started about a thousand years ago is. The ambitions of conquest the space are not from 50/60 years ago. Early in 1914, Robert Goddard created the world's first liquid fueled rocket (oxygen + gasoline) and made a lot of studies and experiments about high altitude rockets. Some years later, during the WWII, Wernher von Braun created the A4 Rocket , mostly known as the V2 Rocket , a powerful missile that reached a range of 320km and a velocity of about 5700km/h. After the war, von Braun went to the U.S. and started developing ballistic missiles and finally was joined NASA, contributting to the creation of the Saturn V roc...

Roman Candles are a type of Firework that usually shoots it's content from a single mortar but multiple times.They are sell both for the consumer and professional market. They exist in small and bigger sizes, some shooting little stars while others shoot big comets or small shells. Are simple items but their construction is interesting and can change depending on the manufacturer, but the working principle is always the same. The basic concept is the use of a strong (because it needs to support multiple firings) and long cardboard mortar. Inside it, there are 4  main components: the lifting powder , the spacers , the flying items ( stars, comets or shells ) and obviously, as any other fireworks, the fuses . Each spacer contains a fuse in the middle to control the timing between each firing and prevent the fire goes once to the bottom, shooting all items at the same time. As in the other posts I do, I'm attaching an image, so you could understand bett...