Ever seen a flame test in real life? How about a firework? Grab a grownup - this fire experiment brings the heat! Explore the science behind color-changing fire with KiwiCo Fire Lab below👇

The science behind color-changing fire:
In this experiment, you saw three different chemicals create three different colors in a flame. This isn’t just a fun party trick — it’s also a real chemistry technique called the flame test. This is also how fireworks of different colors are made!

If you have an unknown chemical, a flame test can help detect whether chemical X contains certain elements. In this case, the colors you see are telling you that you’re looking at three separate chemicals that each contain either lithium, copper, or strontium.

So what’s happening? It’s all about the electrons. You can think of an atom as a tiny, positively-charged nucleus with a bunch of even tinier negatively-charged electrons whizzing around it. The electrons can’t just go wherever they want, though. They need to fit themselves into specific energy levels around the nucleus. On top of that, they want to be sitting at the lowest possible energy level (it’s more comfortable there).

But, if an electron gets a big jolt of energy (like, say, the heat from a flame) it can get kicked up to a higher energy level. When it falls back down, that extra energy is released... as light! The color of that light depends on how much light energy is released. And fortunately for both flame tests and fireworks, that color is a unique signature, like a flag that says, "I’m copper!" or "I’m strontium!"

Featured: KiwiCo Fire La