How many times have you driven home from a fabulous fireworks display and tried in vain to describe your favorite variety? "You know, that big red one with all those curlycue things?" Lacking ...

In a multi-break firework, stars are contained in separate cardboard compartments within the shell. Each compartment has its own bursting charge, which ignites and throws out the stars.

A shell that emits stars in a perfect circle, with the brightness growing as the circle gets bigger, is called a “chrysanthemum”. A firework that has stars that fly outward, then start to desc ...