April 28, 2009

Pyrotechnic Artform

The word pyrotechnics refers to the art, craft, and science of fireworks. As such, it is related to a variety of arts and sciences - as an underdeveloped art, it is nevertheless comparable to many other human arts, such as music, theatre, and film; as a science, it attempts to understand and quantify the chemical and physical phenomena that characterize pyrotechnic reactions. As a craft and art, pyrotechnics originated around the 1st century AD in China, with the invention of black powder. As a science, however, pyrotechnics is quite young. The basic phenomena of flame and color production are now well established, but new effects and novel materials still continue to be discovered.