Do fireworks create mini EMPs?

Ok, a question for you physics majors. I know you're out there - I can hear you converting O to Co2.

Do fireworks "booms" create EMPs or electrostatic bursts? Here's why I'm wondering. I have a little lightning detector circuit that I fire up whenever bad weather is approaching. Usually it tracks the weather radar pretty closely, but in the past two days it's been throwing false alarms pretty regularly, and I'm wondering if it can be caused by nearby fireworks.

I'm guessing that a sudden 'bang' produces at least a small burst of electrostatic energy as the air molecules are suddenly pushed apart in all directions, stripping off some electrons from the sheer friction of the event. Could this be what I'm detecting?

:thinking:

This is just a wild guess, but "maybe" you are right. Fireworks tend to contain metals (conductors) which produce the bright lights during burning. I guess it is feasible to imagine that these high speed burning metal pieces could be causing some kind of lighting like effect, charges, etc.

We routinely pick up power glitches from our "Smart Meter" which wipe out our DSL internet connection, and the ATT guy told me that even refrigerator compressors will noise out the WIFI on their U Verse box, so these devices can be pretty sensitive.

Maybe we are all spoiled by the everyday excellent, behind the scenes work of RF / Electrical Engineers working on products that actually work well ?

It would be interesting to do some testing in a controlled environment near a fireworks display using a software based radio receiver on a laptop where you could view and record waveforms and signals. (you could record ambient audio too for later reference) It would also be interesting to see if a firework blast would register on a hand-held frequency counter. In fact, even a portable AM radio might reveal static noise pulses that correspond with the reports from fireworks explosions.

Also, I wonder if the false alarms from your lightning detector might go away or dramatically diminish after the July 4th holiday?

Around here at least, with so many electrical storms going on - there might be enough peripheral disturbance that the detectors would always be picking up the fringes of something.

The fireworks are combustion and percussion based in nature, and I don't see much in the way of EMP potential...but then, some detectors can have involved interferences/sensitivities as well.

The solar flares for example are building, and EMP events associated with that would be potentially significant.

HarryN, I agree that we're probably spoiled by the sophistication of modern electronic devices. And yes, there are metallic salts that burn in those things, so maybe there is something to this.

Ezo, they have dramatically diminished today. I've picked up absolutely nothing so far, so I suspect there is some correlation with nearby fireworks. The SDR/counter/AM Radio is a good idea. The next time I'm near a display I will bring an AM radio and maybe my EMF Tri-Meter, set on the electrostatic range.

Teej, the solar flare idea is interesting also. The detector circuit runs an algorithm that looks at all electrical disturbances and filters on the ones that look like lightning strikes, but maybe the solar flares contain brief transients as well as longer sustained events.

PhotonWrangler said:

HarryN, I agree that we're probably spoiled by the sophistication of modern electronic devices. And yes, there are metallic salts that burn in those things, so maybe there is something to this.

Ezo, they have dramatically diminished today. I've picked up absolutely nothing so far, so I suspect there is some correlation with nearby fireworks. The SDR/counter/AM Radio is a good idea. The next time I'm near a display I will bring an AM radio and maybe my EMF Tri-Meter, set on the electrostatic range.

Teej, the solar flare idea is interesting also. The detector circuit runs an algorithm that looks at all electrical disturbances and filters on the ones that look like lightning strikes, but maybe the solar flares contain brief transients as well as longer sustained events.

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Well, burn a metallic salt and some controls, next to the detector, and see if anything happens.



If it does, the EMP bombs now in design are a lot more sophisticated than need be.

TEEJ said:

Well, burn a metallic salt and some controls, next to the detector, and see if anything happens.

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I think it would require a burst of sorts to simulate this properly, and I'm not comfortable doing this. Especially in the house. :laughing:

TEEJ said:

Well, burn a metallic salt and some controls, next to the detector, and see if anything happens.



If it does, the EMP bombs now in design are a lot more sophisticated than need be.

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I'm not sure burning would do much of anything that would register electromagnetically. You would probably need the chemical reaction to occur within an explosion to obtain a pulse. EMP bombs are a whole different animal than what we are talking about here. It is one thing for a fireworks explosion or other ordnance or lightning strike to cause some EMI noise and entirely another thing to create an EMP that will destroy circuitry.

Yeah, the EMP I'm talking about is small scale stuff, enough to generate electrical noise but not enough to damage anything.

My detector's antenna is a small surface-mount coil, so it's listening for electromagnetic information, not necessarily electrostatic, so I suspect that there is an EMP component as well as an electrostatic one. But I need to gather more info to correlate cause and effect a little better. It was just curious to see this thing go nuts during the last two days (with clear skies) and now it's quiet again. I'll take another look tonight as there are still some people shooting off their stuff at night.

Yes, I'm a little bit of a weather geek.

This is a little off topic but sort of related. I'm a weather geek too! I've been enjoying a new iPad weather app I downloaded about a week ago called Radar Cast Pro that gives you a great close to real time animated radar map of anything from all of North America down to street level at your own location. You can place pins in any number of areas on the map as reference points for a wide variety of weather data. In this paid version of the software you get real time indications of lightning strikes and you can touch the lightning symbols on the map to get exact distances from your location. The app also warns you if it is going to rain soon - (start and stop times - or that it won't rain within the next hour) I find myself using this thing many times a day. In fact last night there were fierce lightning strikes and thunder storms I could see out in my view but the app told me they were just "in the vicinity" and I was able to see that this storm system was going to completely pass me by and that I could enjoy watching the clouds light up with amazing lightning strikes but could otherwise ignore them and not shut down my computers like I usually have to do when we get lightning up on this mountain. This is rapidly becoming my "go-to" weather app of choice!

The other day, I planned a sneak attack on a squad of GI Joe soldiers. So first I detonated a firecracker 12" above their mini radar truck, and the micro EMP pulse was successful in taking out their early warning radar! Then we were able to send in our toy jets without fear of losses to AA missiles. They retreated.

So, yes, it prevented a devastating assault on the sandbox out back......

LOL

HighlanderNorth said:

The other day, I planned a sneak attack on a squad of GI Joe soldiers. So first I detonated a firecracker 12" above their mini radar truck, and the micro EMP pulse was successful in taking out their early warning radar! Then we were able to send in our toy jets without fear of losses to AA missiles. They retreated.

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Lol! Good job of taking out their defenses!

Ezo, thanks for that information on the Radar app. I'm definitely going to get that!

PhotonWrangler said:

Ezo, thanks for that information on the Radar app. I'm definitely going to get that!

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You're welcome! There's a free version without the real time lightning and other features called Hi-Def Radar that I had before I bought this one. I like to use both simultaneously now, switching sometimes from one to another! I use one for the whole northeast or country and the other for just my local area and have them both set with different parameters like satellite view or street view with or without state boundaries. Obviously you don't need to do that since you could just zoom in or out but I discovered this was better and cooler than disposing of the free version. If you buy this app, do it soon as it is on sale for half price for a limited time.

Edit: It turns out the "free" Hi-Def Radar app is no longer free, it's now offered for 99 cents but this version does have the real time lightning display. The more expensive Radar Pro app adds push notifications, FutureCasts, RadarCasts and a few other features. Definitely worth the extra 99 cents in my view.

I definitely need the real-time lightning so I will go for the paid app. Lightning tends to cause havoc in my line of work which is why I put together my little detector so this will make a nice addition to it. Besides I think thunderstorms are just cool.

HarryN said:

We routinely pick up power glitches from our "Smart Meter" which wipe out our DSL internet connection, and the ATT guy told me that even refrigerator compressors will noise out the WIFI on their U Verse box, so these devices can be pretty sensitive.

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HarryN, I have a suggestion that may help your DSL/WiFi problem. I had similar issues with losing my wifi signal from a DSL modem/router but in my case it was caused by cordless phones and sometimes from the use of a microwave oven in the house. Many cordless phones transmit their signals in a narrow radio frequency range around 2.4 GHz as do WiFi routers. Your problem with "power glitches" may be simply from your Smart Meter transmitting data intermittently throughout the day as they too often use the 2.4 Ghz range to do that. When you have too many devices close to each other using the 2.4 Ghz bands, you can potentially have problems. The 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi signal range is divided into a number of smaller bands or channels, similar to television channels. In the United States there are 11 of them. Every brand of wireless router is a little different but if you go into the firmware on your unit using a web browser (try entering 192.168.1.1 in your browser address bar to access your firmware) you can simply change the channel your wifi set-up is working on. The new channel you chose will hopefully be farther away from the problem signals. In my case, it took a little trial and error but it cured the drop-outs and gave me a much hotter signal as well.

+1 on what Ezo said. I have a 2.4ghz spectrum analyzer (similar to the Wi-Spy) and it's amazing to see how much junk is present in this band -

Bluetooth devices
Wireless baby monitors and surveillance cameras
Cordless phones
Alarm systems
Zigbee radios (very low power but still there)
Smartphones
And microwave ovens

A leaky microwave oven swamps the entire 2.4ghz band with interference when it's running, and all microwave ovens leak at least a little bit. Older ones with worn door seals and weak hinges can leak more.

PhotonWrangler said:

I'm guessing that a sudden 'bang' produces at least a small burst of electrostatic energy as the air molecules are suddenly pushed apart in all directions, stripping off some electrons from the sheer friction of the event.

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I'm having some difficulty believing that such a small event has an electromagnetic signature.

yes it does

electric and magnetic...but very feeble in both regards

any time you move particles through air (or most gasses for that matter) some electrostatic charge results

a firework does create these electrostatic charges with it's smoke plume, as well as other reasons

with a sensitive detector you'd see it

Apparently, there has been a lot of research going into this subject, or at least very closely related subject, particularly in regard to using enhanced conventional explosives to build non-nuclear EMP weapons and for other purposes including as a pure physics research tool. The objects of this research are called explosive driven pulsed power devices. This includes devices that convert chemical energy stored in high explosives into electrical energy and that use shock waves generated by explosives to release the energy stored in ferromagnetic and ferroelectric materials in the form of electrical energy. Pulsed power is simply the process by which stored energy is subsequently released or delivered very rapidly to a load. As an example, at one time pulsed power was researched for possible use in X-Ray machines. The book "Explosive Pulsed Power", available on Amazon seeks to acquaint readers with the theory and applications of these devices. According to an interesting quote from the book, "a mechanical variant of pulsed power is the bull whip. Energy stored in the angular momentum of the whip as it is rotated, only to be delivered to the tip of the whip in the form of a "crack" as the whip snaps. An electrical variant is the Marx generator. Electrical energy is slowly stored in a capacitive medium and then delivered to a load in a short pulse or train of pulses. Pulsed power systems can be categorized as one of two types, explosive driven and non-explosive driven."

I guess in the most simple terms, any explosion that ionizes the air around it will generate an electrical impulse of some magnitude or another and certain additives and enhancements can multiply this phenomenon. The devices discussed in this book are far more sophisticated than simple fireworks and explosives but the principle is quite similar. In the case of fireworks the load the energy is delivered to would be the metal salts and other additives they contain that would burn and expand under extreme pressure to rapidly release electrons. Since fireworks contain a variety of metallic salts including ferrous salts and sometimes actual iron filings, it seems logical to conclude that they at least have the potential to release an electrical impulse that can be detected.

Thanks for the information, 127 and Ezo. It makes sense to me.

I fired up the detector tonight. I live a few miles away from a ballpark. I heard them shooting off fireworks today, and I caught a "lightning" detection that said it was 10 miles away. Given that the detector looks at amplitude of the strike, this might correlate. I wonder if this device is also acting as a home run detector. :laughing: