Chemistry lights up university lecture

Fireworks inside? Sounds like every chemistry student's laboratory dream.

A packed Canterbury University lecture theatre was treated to an illustrated chemistry of fireworks last night as part of the International Year of Chemistry.

Fireworks Professionals chief executive Anthony Lealand led the demonstration andgave a history of fireworks and their use in pyrotechnic displays.

Before setting up the company about 25 years ago, Lealand was a senior demonstrator in the university's physics department.

The size of the lecture theatre had determined the size of the demonstration, he said.

"So we have to use indoor pyrotechnics and some of those will demonstrate the old-fashioned look, but there's a real limit to what can be done in a room."

He discussed the use of different chemicals to achieve different effects and the techniques of colouring the explosions using metal salts, including barium, to give green sparks, copper for blue and strontium for red.

Lealand is a fireworks certifier for the Environmental Protection Authority and wrote New Zealand's Code of Practice for Fireworks. Fireworks Professionals employs seven staff.

The International Year of Chemistry marks the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prize awarded to Marie Curie and is also the centenary of the publication of Lord Rutherford's paper detailing the discovery of the atomic nucleus.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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