As Patrick said, today’s been a completely normal day at the Mercury.

Matt Staab, chemistry teacher at Cleveland High School, brought his “Explosives ‘Kit’” to show us a few DIY (and a few don’t try ‘em at home) fire balls and bangs and volcanic diet coke tricks.

These are elemental salts, on fire, producing a rainbow of colors:

Oooo, pretty. Staab gave me some notes, and the ones for this experiment say:

quantum mechanics. e- drops back to lower energy light emitted (photon/wave)

Check out more explosions, plus a few tips on where to procure the necessary ingredients for “exploding acetylene balloons,” in the July 3 issue!