Not far from our home, every Independence Day, there is a big fireworks show. It's close enough to our house that we can sit in our driveway and enjoy it.
This year, our oldest child set up her point-and-shoot digital camera on a tripod and shot some images of the fireworks show (an example of one of her photos is on the left).
The day after the show we took a walk down to the park where the fireworks are shot from. We walked down to a running track, at the local school, and found a section where it appeared the fireworks were set up. Littered about were spent shell casings, fuses, wires, and burned bits of cardboard. Some labels were still legible and we saw many with the word "peony" on them. As we stopped, to examine the material, many questions arose: "What is this piece?", "Is that gunpowder?", "Will it still explode?", etc. Left to themselves, they would have gladly collected armloads of spent fireworks to bring home and fiddle with.
As it was, I let them bring a select few pieces (see photo to the right) home to pore over and examine. Once we got home, I did a quick Google search on fireworks and was able to find a video explanation of how fireworks operate as well as some nifty diagrams of the components of various fireworks. We were able to ascertain that the half shell shown in the lower right of the photo is the outer shell casing of an aerial shell (see diagram below). We also noted that the label indicates a 3" shell that was to be launched from a mortar tube. And we noted that the fireworks were made in China, the birthplace of gunpowder.
It's experiences such as these that homeschoolers strive for - the wonderful, and unexpected, opportunities for our children to do some serendipitous learning. At the end of the day our children were left wondering just which of the brilliant explosions they saw, on Independence Day, was caused by the spent casings they now held in their hands.
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