American patriotism burns bright for July 4

More than two centuries after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, bombs burst through the air Monday night.\nBeyond the traditional holiday parade hosted in about every community across the U.S., Bloomington residents and guests mixed and mingled throughout a Fourth of July holiday weekend that offered various learning opportunities, a fish fry, and a 35-minute firework show. Otherwise patriotic Americans were spotted along the city's streets draped in American flag clothing and accessories, including red, white and blue hair ribbons, top hats and face paint.\nMatthew Nance, an IU Chemistry faculty member, spent the day before the Fourth of July entertaining children with the science of fireworks at the Wonder Lab's outdoor WonderGarden. He educated Bloomington youth about the chemical reactions of firework colors and the history of Independence Day fireworks. \n"This is why the British lost (the Revolutionary War) -- sometimes the wind isn't our friend," Nance joked while attempting to hold a homemade-cardboard cannon upright above a lit fuse so he could dump sodium into the tube to create a small explosion.\n"Wooooow," the audience howled as a giant fireball shot from the cannon when the salt sprinkled atop the flame.\n"The secret ingredient is oxygen," Nance lectured behind the glare of plastic safety goggles.\nHe said Revolutionary War "black powder," a predecessor of modern gunpowder, consisted of charcoal, sulfur and potassium nitrate. Because the battleground scene often consisted of plumes of black powder smoke, modern gunpowder does not contain sulfur to increase solider visibility as she or he looks along the barrel toward a gun's sight.\nNance said black powder was used by the Chinese more than a thousand years ago to launch rats from bamboo tubes toward a perceived enemy.\n"Imagine soldiers on horses firing rats -- I'd be pretty scared," he said. "The rats would probably be more scared than you are."\nNance also encouraged the crowd to scream "hey, that's strontium" when they spotted red fireworks throughout the holiday weekend. Strontium is an expensive chemical that increases the cost of red-colored fireworks, he said, so a typical fireworks display contains few red-colored bursts of light throughout the night sky.\nHoliday weekend vendors offered water bottles from wagons, American flag memorabilia like buttons and pins and colorless cotton candy.\nRichard Dunbar, exalted ruler of the Bloomington's Elk Lodge No. 446, said more than 700 campus and community members chomped through about 400 pounds of dry-batter breaded Chinese Pollack during their public holiday feast. \n"We really appreciate the members of the public that showed up and all the members who worked from 6:30 a.m. to about 7 p.m. We had more people stop by than years past," Dunbar said. "It seemed like a whole new crowd of people -- it was a good day for us because we do general fundraising to raise money for cancer research at IU and Purdue and we participate in the clothe-a-child program with the Bloomington police and fire departments." \nCamped along the southside of the IU Memorial Stadium and surrounded by about 500 feet of restricted space, Bloomington's annual firework display ignited after several hours of live music, carnival-like food, a festive atmosphere of sparkler craziness and a port-a-potty line that sprawled about 100 people deep for most of the evening.\nLes Compton, club manager for the Bloomington AMVETS Post 2000, said about 80 volunteers consisting of American military veterans orchrastrated the city's annual Fourth of July fireworks for the estimated crowd of 50,000 campus that scattered around the IU Memorial Stadium and throughout town to watch the bomb-bursting display. He said the club purchased $25,000 worth of fireworks to explode.\n"We receive outside donations from the community and the AMVETS post puts the show together each year," Compton said. "This year's show was the same as year's past, and I hope the crowd likes it and appreciates the community's work."\nThroughout the city's annual firework display, Bloomington adults and children alike were heard yowling "oohhhhh" and "ahhhhh" before filing into their automobiles, joining a spider web of congestion and continuing on to other spectacles of American patriotism with family and friends away from Memorial Stadium's gravel lot.