تعتبر الألعاب النارية بمثابة الوسيلة المثلى للتعبير عن الفرح وبدء انطلاقة الاحتفالات في مناسبةٍ ما في كافةِ أنحاء العالم بدءًا من الصين القديمة وحتى دول العالم الحديث، إذ تعج السماء بالألوان والأشكال الرائعة بالتزامنِ مع بدء انطلاقها، ففي الكثير من المناسبات العالمية قد تم الاستعانةِ بها؛ سواء باحتفالات رأس السنة الميلادية أو انطلاقة مونديال أو أي شيءٍ من هذا القبيل، لكن قد يجهل الكثير تاريخ الألعاب النارية وبدء استخدامها، وهذا ما سيتم التعمق به في سطور هذا المقال.
تعمل الألعاب النارية بالاعتمادِ على وجود مادة البارود في أنبوبٍ إلى جانبِ مجموعة المكونات المعروفة باسم النجمة، وتتفاوت قياسات النجوم ما بين 3-4 سم على الأقل تبعًا لما أصدرته الجمعية الكيميائية الأمريكية، ويدخل في مكوناتها مزود وقود وعامل تأكسد وبعض الأملاح المعدنية الملونة، وفور اشتعال الفتيل تبدأ النار بالتسلل للوصول إلى البارود لينطلق الأنبوب بالسماء؛ فتتناثر النجوم بداخله وتصدر الألوان نتيجة تعرض المواد الملونة للتسخين، وينتج إصدار الضوء على هامش امتصاص ذرات العناصر الكيميائية فيها وفقدان الفائض منها، ويتفاوت مقدار الطاقة الذي تنتجه كل مادة كيميائية عن الأخرى.
مبدأ عمل الألعاب النارية
من أبرز الأمثلة على ذلك؛ أنه عند خضوع نترانت الصوديوم لدرجات حرارة عالية؛ تبدأ الإلكترونيات الموجودة في ذرات الصوديوم بامتصاص الطاقة، وتزداد طاقتها بذلك لتصبح 200 كيل جول لكل مول؛ فيظهر على أثر ذلك الضوء الأصفر، وهكذا، وتظهر الألوان في الألعاب النارية على النحو التالي:
يظهر اللون لأزرق عند تسخين مركبات كلوريد النحاس.
يتم الحصول على اللون الأحمر عند تسخين أملاح السترونتيوم وكربونات السترونتيوم وأملاح الليثيوم..
يظهر اللون الأرجواني عند خلط مركبات النحاس المنتجة للون الأزرق ومركبات السترونتيوم التي تنتج اللون الأحمر.
يمكن الحصول على اللون الأخضر بمزج مركبات الباريوم مع كلوريد الباريوم.
يمزج كلوريد الكالسيوم وأملاح الكالسيوم؛ فيظهر اللون البرتقالي.
تاريخ الألعاب النارية
تعتبر الصين الموطن الأصلي للألعاب النارية وفق اعتقاد الغالبية العظمى من المؤرخين، بالرغم من أهناك بعض المعلومات التي تشير إلى أنها قد وُجدِت لأول مرة في منطقة الشرق الأوسط والهند؛ إلا أن ما يؤكد استهلال الصين ببدء استخدامها أنه منذ سنة 800م بدأ الصينيون بمزج الأملاح الصخرية مع الكبريت والفحم ليأتوا بمادة البارود، وأشارت معلومات صادرة عن مؤسسة سلامة وتعليم الألعاب النارية الأمريكية إلى أن الهدف منذ بداية العهد لم يكن الإتيان بهذه الألعاب؛ وإنما كان استخدامها كوسيلة للتخلص من الأرواح الشريرة من خلال الإنفجارات التي تحدث عند اشتعالها، وقد كانت طريقة الصنع البدائية لها تتمثل بتعبئة مقدارٍ من مادة البارود في قلبِ براعم الخيزران ووضعه هذه البراعم المليئة بالبارود في النار؛ فيترتب على ذلك حدو انفجارٍ عظيم، وبدأ تطور الألعاب النارية تدريجيًا حتى تم الاستغناء تمامًا عن الخيزران والاستعانة بالأنابيب الورقية.
إرتبط إقتران الفكرة الأولية للألعاب النارية بظهور وتطور قنابل بارودية فيما بعد، وقد تم توظيفها في وظيفة حربية من خلال ربطها بالسهام وإطلاقها تجاه العدو ثم استخدامها لتكون صواريخ يتم توجيهها لإلحاق الأذى بالعدو، ومع حلول سنة 1295م تمكن ماركو بولو من إدخال هذا الاختراع إلى الأراضي الأوروبية، وبدأ تطويرها بشكلٍ كبير من قِبل الدول الغربية واستخدامها كأحد أنواع التكنولوجيا الحربية؛ فأصبحت أسلحة فتّاكة كالمدافع مثلًا، كما أن هذه الألعاب الرائعة تستخدم في الاحتفالات وتحديدًا في إنجلترا منذ القرون الوسطى.
استخدامات الألعاب النارية في التاريخ
استعراض للألعاب النارية لأول مرة في الاحتفالات الملكية سنة 1486م في إنجلترا خلال حفل زفاف الأمير هنري السابع.
في عام 1685م تم إطلاق عرض كبير للألعاب النارية خلال حفل تتويج جيمس الثاني بحصوله على لقب رائد الفروسية.
إطلاق الألعاب النارية في احتفال ميلاد نجل القيصر بطرس الأكبر في روسيا، واستمر لمدة 5 ساعات متواصلة.
المرجع:
History of Fireworks
A Brief History of Fireworks
blob:https://www.popularmechanics.com/db490070-07ba-465d-96df-ee0089963012
200 B.C.: It starts with a big bang. Bamboo thrown on a fire in China explodes as air expands inside the reeds, and rudimentary firecrackers are born. Locals decide they should be used to scare away evil spirits.
A.D. 600 TO 900: Things get pyrotechnical when a Chinese alchemist combines sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal and sets it on fire. The more oxygen-rich the saltpeter, the bigger the explosion. Soon the Chinese pack powder, rocks, and metal into containers to make weapons.
1295: Marco Polo brings fireworks to Europe from the Orient. (Also: porcelain, jewels, spices, and other less exciting items that don't go boom.)
1400 TO 1500: The Renaissance begets unparalleled advances in art, literature—and fireworks. The Italians launch projectiles and burn powdered metals and charcoal slowly in open tubes to create sparklers. Controlled fires become de rigueur at coronations. Commoners miss out on the fun.
1635: John Bate publishes the four-part book series The Mysteries of Nature and Art. In part two, he outlines how to create flying dragons, along with other fiery spectacles. Among those the book inspires: a young Sir Isaac Newton.
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DEA / G. DAGLI ORTIGETTY IMAGES
1730s: Powder to the people! In England, fireworks shows become public spectacles for everyone to enjoy. Colonists bring them to the Americas, where they set them off on Independence Day 1777 and think, we should do this again next year.
1830s: Italian pyrotechnicians add color to fireworks with chlorinated powder and metallic salts (strontium = red, barium = green, copper = blue, sodium = yellow). Using potassium chlorate as an oxidizer makes the hues brighter.
1966: Cherry bombs, first used as weapons during the Civil War, are banned in the U.S. But until his death in 1978, Keith Moon, drummer of the Who, blows off steam—and blows up hotel toilets—with illegal cherry bombs.
1976: The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission requires fuses on consumer fireworks to burn for at least 3 seconds but no more than 9. Safety warnings on fireworks labels become protocol.
1999: Disney World launches fireworks with compressed air instead of gunpowder at Epcot's pyrotechnic spectacular IllumiNations: Reflections of Earth. Disney is the largest U.S. consumer of fireworks, making its theme parks the "happiest places on earth" for American pyromaniacs.
2008: The Chinese Olympic Committee admits that CGI was used to enhance fireworks footprints that appeared to walk across the sky for TV audiences and fans watching the Beijing stadium's Jumbotron. The New York—based Grucci family, who created the actual display, is not amused.
2010: Pop singer Katy Perry releases the empowering single "Firework," reportedly inspired by this passage (see below) from Jack Kerouac's 1957 novel On the Road.
"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who... burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."
History of Fireworks
By Alina Bradford, Live Science Contributor
The 4th of July was celebrated as our Independence Day in 1777.
Credit: Alexey Stiop | Dreamstime.com
Today, fireworks mark celebrations all over the world. From ancient China to the New World, fireworks have evolved considerably. The very first fireworks — gunpowder firecrackers — came from humble beginnings and didn't do much more than pop, but modern versions can create shapes, multiple colors and various sounds.
How fireworks work
Before diving into the history of fireworks, it is important to understand how they work. Each modern firework consists of an aerial shell. This is a tube that contains gunpowder and dozens of small pods. Each of the pods is called a "star." These stars measure about 1 to 1.5 inches (3 to 4 centimeters) in diameter, according to the American Chemical Society(ACA), and hold:
- Fuel
- An oxidizing agent
- A binder
- Metal salts or metal oxides for color
A firework also has a fuse that is lit to ignite the gunpowder. Each star makes one dot in the fireworks explosion. When the colorants are heated, their atoms absorb energy and then produce light as they lose excess energy. Different chemicals produce different amounts of energy, creating different colors.
For example, when sodium nitrate is heated, electrons in the sodium atoms absorb the energy and get excited. As the electrons come down from the high, they release their energy, about 200 kilojoules per mole (a unit of measurement for chemical substances), or the energy of yellow light, according to the website of the University of Wisconsin-Madison chemistry professor Bassam Z. Shakhashiri. [How Do Fireworks Get Their Colors?] According to the ACA, this is how some fireworks colors are made:
- Blues are made with copper-chloride compounds.
- Reds are made with strontium salts, strontium carbonate and lithium salts.
- Purple is made with a mix of blue-producing copper compounds and red-producing strontium compounds.
- Orange is created with calcium salts and calcium chloride.
- Green is made with barium chloride and other barium compounds.
The beginning of fireworks
Most historians think that fireworks were invented in China, though some argue that the original birthplace was in the Middle East or India. We do know that somewhere around A.D. 800, Chinese alchemists mixed together saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal and created a crude gunpowder, according to the American Pyrotechnics Safety and Education Foundation. This wasn't what they were aiming for. They were actually looking for a recipe for eternal life, but what they created changed the world anyway. Once they realized what they had made, the Chinese came to believe that these explosions would keep evil spirits away. To create some of the first fireworks, they would pack the new gunpowder into bamboo shoots and throw the shoots into a fire, which created a loud blast. After this, fireworks evolved. Paper tubes replaced bamboo stalks, for example, and instead of throwing the tubes in a fire, people added fuses made from tissue paper.
By the 10th century, the Chinese had figured out that they could make bombs with the gunpowder, and so they attached firecrackers to arrows that they shot at enemies. Within the next 200 years, fireworks were honed into rockets that could be fired at enemies without the help of an arrow. This technology is still used today in firework shows.
The spread of gunpowder
In 1295, Marco Polo brought fireworks to Europe from Asia. (However, Europeans likely were introduced to gunpowder weaponry during the Crusades a few years earlier, according to the Smithsonian.) Then, around the 13th century, gunpowder and the recipes to create it made their way to Europe and Arabia via other diplomats, explorers and Franciscan missionaries, according to the Smithsonian. From there, the West developed the technology into more-powerful weapons that we know today as cannons and muskets. People in the West still retained the original idea of fireworks, though, and used them during celebrations. Jesters would also entertain crowds with fireworks in medieval England. In England, rulers used fireworks displays to entertain their followers. The first royal fireworks display is thought to have taken place on Henry VII's wedding day in 1486. In 1685, James II's coronation presentation was so amazing that it earned the fire master a knighthood. Not to be outdone, Czar Peter the Great of Russia put on a 5-hour fireworks show to mark the birth of his son.
Learning the art of explosions
During the Renaissance, pyrotechnic schools were popping up across Europe, according to History.com. The schools taught eager students how to create elaborate explosions. In Italy, fireworks were particularly popular, and in the 1830s, people in that country incorporated trace amounts of metals and other ingredients to enhance the brightness and to make creative shapes. They also finally developed more colors for fireworks. Up until then, all fireworks were orange. The Italians created mixtures with various chemicals, producing fireworks displays that are much closer to modern versions. They used strontium for red, barium for green, copper for blue and sodium for yellow.
Journey to the New World
As Europeans traveled to the New World, so did their fireworks recipes. Some say that Capt. John Smith set off the first American display, in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1608, according to History.com. On July 4, 1777, the first anniversary of the day the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, fireworks became a Fourth of July tradition.
The year before, John Adams wrote in a letter, "The day will be most memorable in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade … bonfires and illuminations [fireworks] … from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forevermore." His prediction was right, and the tradition continued in 1777 and every year since then.
Not everyone liked fireworks, however, Because of some shenanigans, in 1731, Rhode Island outlawed the use of fireworks for "mischievous ends," according to the Smithsonian. In the 1890s, other states and some cities created regulations to control how and where fireworks could be used. Today, many towns and states still have their own laws governing the use of fireworks.
Still in the fireworks business, China produces and exports more fireworks than any other country in the world, according to History.com.
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