Why do sparklers leave a trail

This same phenomenon happens in many other aspects of our lives dealing with vision and the presence of light.

Persistence of vision, and the lengthy chemical reaction that causes it, gives us the ability to experience motion pictures, see the movements of images in a flipbook, and even keeps us from becoming temporarily blind every time we blink our eyes. Movies, like flipbooks, are a series of pictures firing at a very fast rate in order to create the sense of motion and continuity.

In reality, though, these pictures flicker and generate minute periods of darkness between each image. Because this firing rate is so fast and our brains retain the previous picture for a long enough time period, it is basically impossible to notice these small breaks and allows us to experience fluidity on the screen. In fact, if our eyes and brain did not work together to provide this slightly elongated process, we would not be able to experience movies the way we do today.

Obviously, the flashlight was off during the exposure. Finally, I went through a couple of boxes of sparklers and four different Manual Exposure camera apps for my iPhone to try and shoot long exposure blurred sparkler pictures. I totally struck out. I did however use the native camera app to shoot this picture of Alexander. I tapped on his face to focus and properly expose for that area of the picture. Your email address will not be published.

Submit a Comment Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Search for:. Follow us to see the Fan Photo of the Day. Dreaming of a travel workshop? Follow Us Follows. Click Here to Stay in Touch. Pin It on Pinterest. The cool thing about blackbodies is that the color of light they give off is related to their temperature. Actually, an object with some temperature produces a range of light colors.

The peak of this color distribution is related to the temperature of the object. I know this is confusing, but I can summarize by saying that cooler objects produce longer wavelength light in the infrared part of the spectrum and hotter stuff can glow red. Even hotter stuff glows white-ish. Really, you should just play with awesome flash applet from PhET. Here is a screenshot of the applet. Most of the light at this temperature is longer than visible light such that you can't see it. Only the tail end of this curve is in the visible spectrum.

That's why a very hot stove element appears dark red. Go back to that blackbody applet. Adjust the temperature until you find a blackbody color that is green. No, it's not green at around K. I would call that white. It seems you can't get the color green with just blackbody radiation. There has to be something else going on.

There is another way to produce light other than having an object get hot. You almost certainly have one of these objects in your housea fluorescent lightbulb. The old style incandescent bulb produces visible light by increasing the temperature of a tiny filament inside the bulb.

However, for the fluorescent bulb light is produced by exciting a gas. The fluorescent bulb is actually a little complicated so let's look at the neon light. The neon light produces just certain colors of light. You can see these colors by using one of these spectral glasses they're very cheap to get. The different colors of light correspond to different energy level transitions in the atom.

Yes, an electron in the atom moves down to a lower energy level it produces light. Different atoms have different energy levels such that each atom has its own signature colors of light it produces. The stars may even be arranged inside the shell of the firework so that they burst in a certain formation to form a shape.

Firework displays always use a range of striking colours, the variety of colours comes from the use of different chemicals. Elements such as barium, copper and lithium burn with a coloured flame and are chosen for use in fireworks due to the bright colours they produce.

The gas takes up more space than there is available inside the shell so it bursts out creating a loud BANG. Crackling noises come from fireworks which contain lead.