16" Shell (Fireworks) Explodes On the Ground

Remember kids, fireworks can be dangerous!

How Fireworks Work

Popular Mechanics has posted a nice write-up about one of our favorite (at least most of neighbor's favorite) Fourth of July toys work.

Link

Firecracker Wrapper Photo Collection

I really love the artwork from classic firecracker wrappers. Here is a nice collection from flickr:


Created with flickr slideshow.

If you want to do some more exploration of this art form I suggest this book, Firecrackers: The Art and History
,by Warren Dotz, a pop culture historian who has published many books filled with a plethora of wonderful photos.

Recipe for Chemical Snakes

Make your own snakes! Yay!

For those of you that grew up in similar areas to me - or should I say for those of you that did NOT grow up in an area like this - all we could get for fireworks was snakes and sparklers, the good stuff as quoted by Joe Dirt. Well now you can make your own snakes which moves them up on the 'cool scale' from zero to about one.

What? You can't read Russian? The ingredients are soda and powdered sugar. I can't seem to post a permanent link to a translated page but try http://babelfish.altavista.com/ and plug this link in: http://www.mntc.ru/projects/snakes/