Fireworks on the Field

Kaitlyn was practicing her pitching at the baseball field . She reached into her bucket for another ball . Suddenly—beep, beep, beep! A big truck backed slowly onto the field. “ Hey! ” Kaitlyn thought . “ What’s that doing here?” A man got out of the truck. “ Sorry, ” he said.

“ We need to set up here for tonight’s fireworks display. You’ll have to move somewhere else. ” “ The Fourth of July show is still hours away, ” Kaitlyn said . “ Can’t I practice my pitching some more?” “ I’m afraid not, ” the man said. “ It takes several hours to set up a fireworks display. ”

By now more men had arrived. They were moving wooden racks and boxes onto the field. Kaitlyn sighed. She looked closely at a rack. It held short plastic pipes. “ Those are fireworks?” “ Nope, ” the man said. “ Those are cannons that shoot the fireworks into the sky. “ He opened a box and took out a brown object wrapped in plastic.

It was about the size of a baseball and looked like a little bomb. “ This is a firework shell. ” “ What’s inside of it?” Kaitlyn asked. ” I’ll explain, ” said the man. He set the shell gently back into the box. Then he bent down and drew a big circle in the dirt. ” A shell is filled with little balls of gunpowder. Pyrotechnicians, like me, call these balls ‘stars. ’

He picked up some baseballs and formed a pattern inside the circle with them. ” The pattern of the stars gives a firework its shape. ” ” What gives a firework its color?” Kaitlyn asked. ” Magic! ” The man laughed . Kaitlyn didn’t . She really wanted to know the answer!

" Well, the magic of science, ” the man added quickly . " Pyrotechnicians add chemicals to the gunpowder stars . When these chemicals burn, they make different colors . Like chemicals containing copper, for example—can you guess what color they make when they burn?”