sciencesourceimages: How Do Fireworks Get Their Colors? It’s Element-ary! Those beautiful exp

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How Do Fireworks Get Their Colors? It’s Element-ary!

Those beautiful explosions in the sky that take our breath away are powered by chemistry. Fireworks display different colors due to the various kinds of materials packed inside them. For example, the image above shows positive results of flame tests for various chemical elements. A flame test is an analytic procedure used in chemistry to detect the presence of certain elements, primarily metal ions, based on each element’s characteristic emission spectrum.

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When certain metals are heated, their electrons momentarily jump to a higher energy level. When these electrons settle back down to their original energy level, the cooling process emits a photon. Depending on the material, the photon will have a different wavelength and, therefor, will emit a different color. The flame colors vary for different elements and can be used to identify unknown substances. The ones shown above are (from left to right): copper (green), lithium (red), strontium (red), sodium (yellow), copper (green), and potassium (lilac).

Images above © SPL / Science Source