New Years Fireworks and Other Traditions - Kesler Science Weekly Phenomenon and Graph

Where I live, New Year's Eve means one thing: fireworks! Check out this video I recorded of my town:

Thinking about the fireworks tradition here made me curious - what are some other fun customs for ringing in the new year around the world? I took a deep dive and found some interesting stuff!   

If you and I were ringing in the New Year in the Czech Republic, we’d see apples on the table—not as a healthy midnight snack, though. They slice the apples in half to predict the future. If the seeds form a star, it’s a sign of good luck. But if they make a cross? Yikes—that’s a bad omen.

Over in Germany, they’ve got another cool tradition for New Year’s Eve. People used to drop molten lead into water and interpret the shapes it made as it cooled. Lead melts at a relatively low 621°F (327°C), but, you know, it’s lead—not the safest material to mess with. These days, they’ve swapped it out for melted wax, which is way safer and only needs about 120°F to melt.

In Indonesia, they celebrate by releasing sky lanterns. The key to a successful lantern-flying is using super-light materials and a fuel source that burns long enough to heat the air inside - and knowing how to not set anything on fire when they land!

Back to fireworks: check out these two graphs about fireworks use over the past two decades. The first shows the millions of pounds used by individuals in their own yards, driveways, etc. The second shows the millions of pounds used by professionals putting on displays as group events.

If I were to bring these graphs to my students, here are some questions I'd have to go along with them:

💡Look at the scales of the two graphs. Which group used more fireworks each year? Why do you think the difference is so large between the two graphs?

💡When did personal consumer fireworks usage peak? How many millions of pounds were used?

💡When did personal consumer fireworks increase drastically? When did it drop off again?

💡What trends were happening in professional use during the peak consumer years? 

💡What was going on in 2020 and 2021 that might explain why there were fewer big fireworks displays and more backyard usage? What would have changed in 2023 to reverse the trend?

There is a free student worksheet--with answers--available for this graph!

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