Talk:Fireworks

See also: Talk:Firework

Semi-protected edit request on 1 November 2023

Please remove "and firecrackers" from this line. "Both fireworks and firecrackers are a popular tradition during Halloween in Vancouver." Firecrackers are prohibited in Canada. Cochrane19 (talk) 13:06, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

 Already done by Maproom. Tollens (talk) 01:58, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 6 November 2023

The "licence" in the Halloween section under the header Ireland should be changed to "license". Breadjam· (talk) 03:22, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: no reason given for the proposed change. M.Bitton (talk) 16:55, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 9 November 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) — MaterialWorks 20:43, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

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Fireworks → Firework – Per WP:PLURAL, both Britannica and Oxford Dictionary use "firework" unlike bacteria and Oxford Dictionary notes "Bacteria" should always be used with a plural verb. Yes its more common to have multiple but you can easily talk about a single firework such as someone throwing a single firework at someone or Firework organisers. And there are many things like Shoe or Sock that are more commonly in the plural but we tile singular. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:49, 9 November 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose Fireworks can refer to either the individual device or the general event, which is a plurale tantum. Indeed, the article touches on both aspects of fireworks. If we move it to the singular, it'll feel like it's only appropriate to cover the former. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 08:26, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

  The event isn't plurale tantum like scissors or handcuffs, "I went to a firework display" sounds as good as "I went to a fireworks display". While almost all displays have multiple you can still talk about which firework you liked the most and other things like Peas and Beans are rarely in the singular but we don't title then in the plural. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:16, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

  You are using "firework(s)" attributively here, where the two are synonyms (note that you can also say "scissor blade"). But it breaks down when you try to use it on its own. You can say "I went to the fireeworks" but not "I went to the firework". It is in this sense that it is a plurale tantum. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:29, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

• Oppose per @King of Hearts. Killuminator (talk) 10:28, 10 November 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose plurale tantum Andy Dingley (talk) 21:15, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per KoH. This is a classic plurale tantum. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 23:00, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
• Support per WP:SINGULAR. This is not a true plurale tantum. The plural form is certainly more common, but the singular is definitely used sometimes.[1] Rreagan007 (talk) 00:02, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

  The same can be said for scissors and pants, but attributive use of a term (a-la-"pant leg"/"scissor blade") doesn't render this a non-plurale tantum. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 01:15, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

It's not the same thing. "Pant" and "scissor" can't be used alone in the singular, but only as a compound such as a "pant leg" or a "scissor blade", but "firework" can be used alone in its singular form. You can't say "I have a pant" or "I have a scissor", but you can say "I have a firework" or "A firework failed to explode". Rreagan007 (talk) 21:59, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

You can talk about a single firework or a firework display but you can also talk about a single pea or a bowel of peas. Crouch, Swale (talk) 22:23, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

• Weaker than average oppose - I actually do find the nominator's argument about how we often refer to individual fireworks case in the singular form just like with shoes and socks compelling. In fact those articles might be apt for a similar discussion. But I think King of Hearts also has a point about "fireworks" referring to the event. Furthermore, it appears that "fireworks" is both the default and WP:COMMONNAME for the devices. By default, I mean that it tends to be the most common word choice in situations where the number of fireworks is not specified. For example, "fireworks show", "fireworks store", "Benton fireworks disaster", "I'm going to shoot off fireworks", etc. Not to mention the fact that some individual fireworks cases (commonly referred to as "firework") like roman candles and fountains shoot more than one charge. Bneu2013 (talk) 22:31, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose: I agree with Rreagan007's observation that "the plural form is certainly more common, but the singular is definitely used sometimes", but from this I reach the opposite conclusion: the article title should remain in the plural. BobKilcoyne (talk) 04:25, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose per common name and the perception of what fireworks are (never heard of a singular firework, I guess it's one bottle rocket or something). Randy Kryn (talk) 15:22, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Bias?

This article seems biased against the use of fireworks. It's not the content, but the ordering. The list of types of fireworks, the history, and all that should come before the "big bad scawy fiawowks" data. This is how things are done on the pages for individual chemicals as well, any safety or toxicity information is last because it's not really the topic at hand. "What was that thing I saw at the show last weekend" will be a more common search reason than chemicals the majority of the public will never use.

Although there are some inaccuracies where toxicity is mentioned; for example the amount of perchlorate fallout from properly functioning fireworks is likely to be minimal because it serves as an oxidizer and chlorine donor so it's more likely that any perchlorate would end up as either an oxide and minor amounts of chlorate which is unstable and not as persistent; the only reference on the perchlorate thing is a superfund site in california that tested and made army munitions from 1934-1987... it didn't have anything to do with fallout from the fireworks themselves but from dumping or leaking storage of the oxidizer. IIRC perchlorates are used in certain types of lithium batteries, and if I am remembering that right pollution from that source is going to be hundreds of times what is released by fireworks manufacture if you only count burst batteries laying on the side of the road in broken phones and portable electronics.

The mention of antimony is a bit more bizarre since tens of kiltotons a year of the oxide (which would be the primary product of burning the trisulfide) is used as a flame retardant in polymers (and antimony trisulfide is expensive enough that people try to use minimal amounts in pyro formulations).

Arsenic probably doesn't even deserve mention. I don't think copper acetoarsenite / paris green is used in commercial manufacture at all anymore. Hobbyists can rarely find it if a supplier gets ahold of an ancient drum of the stuff, and the blue formulas that used it are novelties now, if for no other reason than that most people are loathe to use chlorates and that's what it worked best with. In the past roads were dusted with it to control mosquitos over huge portions of the midwest at the very least so any environmental contamination would be dwarfed by that if we switched back to paris green now and only set off blue fireworks for the next million years. The only other arsenical used in ancient formulas is realgar which is expensive and generally replacable (and should be replaced, it wasn't chemically stable in the formulas it was in). I've seen orpiment which is another sulfide mentioned once or twice after looking through thousands of formulas. All 3 of those colors used to be commonly used in oil paints and aren't really possible to find in pre-made paint anymore except from specialty museum restoration suppliers (even they often only sell the raw pigment). That's in contrast to chinese vermillion (mercury sulfide) and the various lead and chromium-based colors which I use and can buy from a number of paint companies and most major suppliers.

Barium is probably the only correctly listed and worst offender, but I'd bet there are worse sources in e-waste. When I mention there being worse sources I'm not saying it shouldn't be a concern, but going after the low hanging fruit that produces 0.1% of the pollution isn't a good use of anyone's time; fireworks are a tradition in many countries and only used for brief periods of the year. Their manufacture is fairly uncommon and already buried in regulation because of the energetic nature of materials and could be called a dying art if it weren't for a few countries which have made it a strong tradition, the hobbyists who develop / learn relatively new effects like the strobe rockets which are still at a stage where the finished compositions and devices have very short shelf lives and can't be used commercially, but if this were fixed everyone who sees them (and likes fireworks) loves them.

Of bigger worry to consumers and ironically not mentioned at all are probably the little "safe & sane" colored smoke fireworks, which work by vaporizing solvent dyes. The most commonly used dyes in fireworks are all simple molecules but fell out of use almost entirely everywhere else because they're basically instant cancer and make things like hexavalent chromium look like candy. In other countries smoke shells / aerial fireworks tend to show up more and vaporizing the dye a couple hundred feet up is far safer for the audience since the concentration / dose to any given spectator ends up being too low to do anything.

I have no problem with the inclusion of environmental issues or even the animal scaring stuff (although I'd argue that the low flying planes / jets running on a continuous basis and the noise of traffic scare my animals consistently where the temporary eruption of fireworks around the 4th is a lesser annoyance for them and two of them didn't even care this year, and I like my ability to set off fireworks more than I like your ability to fly across the country to a business meeting or get drunk in florida or drive like an idiot and not keep your engine tuned so I know which things I'd ban and also appreciate that it's a POV thing which is why it doesn't belong here), but someone coming here likely wants to learn about fireworks first and the minutae of how their fallout on the massive display scale can affect the environment second or not at all. Were this a traditional encyclopedia, fireworks-specific environmental issues would likely not even have their own topic and would be referenced as "see environmentalism" let alone be a big part of the main article.

Then before it gets to fireworks descriptions, it goes into country-by-country regulations... this is another item that's of questionable use to anyone. People tend to know the regulations of the place they live and will never have use for knowledge of fireworks laws in Burma or whatever. I'd propose just re-ordering the article sections for now to place the importance on fireworks themselves first and safety and regulations later as it's done elsewhere on wikipedia and will probably do so myself later, but there are other issues going on here as I mentioned above that I don't feel like touching because they'll take some work and I don't feel like an edit war with someone who didn't get the difference between how government contractors screwed up on what probably was perfectly legal dumping at the time as far back as the 1930s and 40s while rushing production for World War II munitions and a modern fireworks display. A Shortfall Of Gravitas (talk) 13:45, 31 July 2024 (UTC)