The Chemistry of their Environmental Effects

Many of us enjoyed watching spectacular fireworks displays to usher in the new year. However, the vibrant colours of fireworks belie the effects that they can have on the environment. With this graphic, we take a look at some of the issues that they can cause.

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It’s Fireworks Night here in the UK tomorrow, which means fireworks (obviously), bonfires and sparklers. We’ve looked at fireworks in a previous post,so this time around it’s time to take a look at the chemicals that go into producing sparklers, and their various roles. In sparklers, there are ...

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The colours in fireworks stem from a wide variety of metal compounds – particularly metal salts. ‘Salt’ as a word conjures up images of the normal table salt you probably use every day; whilst this is one type of salt (sodium chloride), in chemistry ‘salt’ refers to any compound thatcontains ...

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Names, Formulae, and Charges

Know your sulfates from your sulfites, and your chlorates from your perchlorates? This graphic gives a helping hand with remembering the names, formulae and charges of various different polyatomic ions. The selection covers all of the ions GCSE students are likely to come across, as well as the ...

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