Fireplay

David Howard Abstract: ‘‘Fireplay’’ is a generalist overview of pyrotechnics. It is indebted (and acknowledges its debt) to seminal works such as Brock’s ‘‘History of Pyrotechnics’’ (1949), yet develops an aesthetic – even metaphysical – discussion of the key question for our profession: ‘Why do fireworks move people?’ Keywords: History, aesthetics, gunpowder Ref: JPyro, Issue …
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A Thermokinetic Model for the Combustion of Strobe Composition

Matthew L. Davies Abstract: A model chemical reaction scheme, in which a substance undergoes a two-stage decay process, is developed. It is shown that this reaction scheme follows the Shimizu hypothesis for pyrotechnic strobe combustion; both decay stages are temperature dependent with only the second generating a significant quantity of heat. The model is derived …
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