Have you ever noticed the colours of a firework and identified a blue one yet?
In case you are watching a firework tonight, try and look out for a blue-coloured firework. If you do not find any, do not get upset. It is not just you, the pyrotechnic experts around the world have been experimenting to produce blue fireworks. However, it has been found that blue is by far the most difficult of all the colours to produce. The scientific reason for such an amusing fact is listed below.
The technical director at the American Pyrotechnics Association, John Conkling, shared his perspective on creating blue fireworks, saying that pyrotechnicians have used a variety of formulas to produce that perfect blue coloured firework. However, the blue colour requires amalgamation of copper compound, which unfortunately breaks down due to the high temperature necessary during firework production.
As compared to other colours such as green, red, white, yellow, the blue colour does not remain stable at a high degree, while the other colours are much harder to be destroyed even at a higher temperature.
The fragile compounding of copper is the emitter of blue colour, and that demands the correct chemistry to take place. The heating of the compound at a high temperature washes off the colour and it eventually stops emitting. Now you might ask, why can’t the temperature be kept low then? Well, to answer that, lowering the temperature will not produce the required intensity for creating blue fireworks.
Another interesting reason for blue fireworks to not be visible often is that the color gets camouflaged with the colour of the sky. Since the sky imparts a bluish shade in the evening, therefore most of the other blue-coloured elements do not clearly show up in the skylight.
For creating red fireworks, strontium chloride is used with other elements to form the desired compound that can bear up to 1,500 Fahrenheit heat. But in case of blue fireworks, the moment copper chloride reaches 1000 Fahrenheit, it breaks off. Knowing this fact, has still not made experts find an appropriate and stable substitute for the compound, which is both non-toxic and cheap.
Albeit only a few pyrotechnicians have been successful in creating the perfect blue firework that too after a lot of hard work and chemical war, they still struggle to produce it the next time they intend to do so.
Although blue objects are common around us, blue fireworks are still rare. So, the next time you get lucky and see a blue firework, make sure you appreciate the effort that has gone behind its creation.
