Premise: Teach the entire university general chemistry curriculum but everything is motivated by pyrotechnics…

Origin story: An August 2026 New Yorker article, “The American Art of Blowing Stuff Up” inspired me to learn more about pyrotechnics. While I wait for Grucci to get back to me, I got into reading Conkling & Mocella, Chemistry of Pyrotechnics: Basic Principles and Theory, Third Edition.1 It’s a light read (if you have a PhD in chemistry)—the first few chapters are really a motivated recap of general chemistry, and the later chapters…are applications thereof. Hence the idea: You could teach the entire standard university general chemistry curriculum, entirely motivated by pyrotechnics.*

Advantages

  • Motivates stoichiometry and limiting reagents in a powerful way
  • Atomic structure and spectroscopy (understand different colors from atomic emission)
  • Computing redox is highly relevant (use of pyrovalent indices): connection to oxidizer/fuel ratios
  • Transition metal complexes are important too!
  • Phases of matter (especially solids and gases)—more generally phase changes and vaporization
  • Gas laws: Gas generation, pressure, effects of confinement
  • Thermochemistry (heat, work, enthalpy, entropy, equilibrium)
  • Arrhenius theory & activation energy: Why a reaction can be thermodynamically favorable, but still need ignition
  • Kinetics: Rate laws, particle size effects, chain reactions
  • Acid/Base needed to discuss possible side reactions in storage
  • Labs could be a blast!
  • Motivates safety and risk analysis before lab, importance of hazard classifications storage and disposal
  • Societal connection: (e.g., perchlorates, green pyrotechnics)

Weak areas (relevance is less clear)

  • Solutions
  • Electrochemistry
  • Solubility and precipitation
  • Nuclear chemistry/isotopes (unless you include atomic bombs, which would be cool)
  • Won’t appeal to premeds

Parerga and Paralipomena

  • Teaching relativistic quantum chemistry with an application to fireworks J Chem Educ 2026

  1. I also had day-dreams of taking the graduate certificate, masters, or PhD in explosive engineering at Missouri S&T ↩