Copper salts, fireworks

The difficulty in producing a good blue flame stems from several important considerations. Firstly, impurities in the chemicals present in the firework tend to produce yellow flames, which detract from the blue secondly, coloured flames follow similar physico-chemical phenomena but operate in different regions of the spectrum. Consequently the copper salts (that are normally utihsed for the production of blue stars) decompose thermally to produce a variety of emissions that radiate from about 325 to 660 nm i.e. from green, blue and violet to orange-red) simultaneously polluting the pure blue flame which appears in the 400 to 455 nm region. 

Chemical ingredients of fireworks are chosen to produce specific colors. Barium compounds produce green colors when heated, copper salts produce green and blue flames, sodium salts are yellow in flame, lithium compounds produce red colors, magnesium metal produces brilliant white fight when burned, and strontium compounds produce brilliant red colors. Salts used contain both metallic cations and nonmetallic anions. Anions such as chlorates, perchlorates, and nitrates also contribute oxidizing power to the chemical mixture. 

Each element has a characteristic line spectrum that can be used to identify the element. Note that line emission spectra can also be obtained by heating a salt of a metal with a flame. For instance, common salt (sodium chloride) provides a strong yellow light to the flame coming from excited sodium, while copper salts emit a blue-green light and lithium salts a red light. The colors of fireworks are due to this phenomenon. 

The red color in fireworks is the result of having strontium-containing salts in the fireworks bomb. Similarly, the green/blue colors sometimes seen in fireworks arise from copper salts. Based on your understanding of atomic spectra and the colors in fireworks, describe which atom, copper or strontium, has more widely separated energy levels. 

Various metals emit distinctive colors of visible light when heated to a high enough temperature (flame test). This is the basis for all fireworks, which use the salts of different metals such as strontium (red), barium (green), and copper (blue) to produce the beautiful colors. 

Blue light from copper(ii) salts, such as CUCO3 blue is the most difficult colour to produce in fireworks... 

A Fireworks typically contain the salts of such metals as sodium, calcium, strontium, barium, and copper. 

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