How are fireworks made into shapes,sounds, and colors?

The Strange Stuff Inside Fireworks By Corey Binns, Special to LiveScience When ooohing and ahhhing at the brilliant colors and surprising patterns of a fireworks display, you might take a moment to admire the awesome display of chemistry and physics too. Despite the fantastic aerial display of Dragon's Lairs and Sky Monkeys, the inside of an unlit fireworks device doesn't look like much. But there is some strange stuff in there. The handmade shell contains a powdery concoction of chemicals that produce the bangs and the whistles, as well as the pretty effects. Tubes, hollow spheres, and paper wrappings work as barriers in the device. More complicated shells are divided into even more sections, which controls the timing of secondary explosions once the rocket is airborne. Big booms and whistles come from flash powder. Once used for flashes in photography, flash powder is a combination of fuel-like metal and a chemical that feeds oxygen to fire up the fuel. Different combinations of ...  more