Homemade Black Snake Fireworks 1

Black snake fireworks are small, non-exploding fireworks that you ignite to push out a growing column of black ash. While you can buy these fireworks, they are easy to make using kitchen ingredients and a fuel.

Key Takeaways: Homemade Black Snake Fireworks

• Black snake fireworks create expanding carbon ash rather than explosions.
• Sugar acts as the fuel and carbon source.
• Baking soda releases gases that inflate the snake.
• Sand helps shape and insulate the reaction.
• Homemade black snakes are safer than traditional mercury-based snake fireworks.

Materials

You only need a few common household chemicals for making black snake fireworks:

• 4 teaspoons powdered or confectioner sugar (sucrose)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda (sodium bicarbonate)
• Lighter fluid or 70–91% rubbing alcohol
• Sand or dirt (optional)

Make Black Snake Fireworks

1. Mix together the sugar and baking soda.
2. Make a depression in sand or dirt, pour the mixture into the depression, and lightly cover it with a fine layer of sand. You can also use a bowl or metal tray, but using sand or dirt creates the effect of the snake emerging from the ground.
3. Dampen the soil and mixture with lighter fluid or rubbing alcohol.
4. Light the fuel with a match or lighter. Once the sugar in the underlying mixture catches fire, the black snake will start growing.
5. The firework goes out on its own, but you can extinguish it with water or by covering it with dirt.

How Black Snake Fireworks Work

The chemistry of how black snakes work is a lot like baking (if you continue baking foods until they blacken). Baking soda is a leavening agent in the kitchen that makes baked goods rise by decomposing into sodium carbonate, carbon dioxide, and water vapor. In baking, other ingredients trap the carbon dioxide and water vapor bubbles. Heat makes these bubbles expand. In black snake fireworks, molten sugar traps the gas bubbles. The sugar also serves as a fuel and burns to release more carbon dioxide and water vapor.

The end result is a “snake” of carbon ash. If ethanol is the fuel, the residue is relatively low in toxicity compared with many traditional snake fireworks.

Chemical Equation and Reaction Steps

The black snake firework works through a combination of thermal decomposition and combustion reactions:

1. Decomposition of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) upon heating:
   2NaHCO₃ → Na₂CO₃ + CO₂ + H₂O
   This produces carbon dioxide and water vapor, which puff up the snake as it grows. The resulting sodium carbonate helps stiffen the structure.
2. Combustion of sucrose (sugar) provides heat and produces carbon ash:
   C₁₂H₂₂O₁₁ + 12O₂ → 12CO₂ + 11H₂O
   In reality, the combustion is incomplete, leaving behind black carbon ash and giving the snake its appearance.

The carbon dioxide, steam, and heat expand the mixture, while molten sugar acts like a binder, trapping gas bubbles and pushing the carbon snake upward.

Safety Notes and Cleanup

While this is a relatively safe firework, it still involves open flame, hot ash, and combustion fumes. Follow these safety tips:

• Use outdoors on a heatproof, nonflammable surface (e.g., concrete, metal tray, or sandpit).
• Keep water or sand nearby for emergency extinguishing.
• Avoid inhaling smoke; it may contain soot and minor organic compounds.
• Let the ash cool completely before cleanup.
• Wear gloves if handling the remains, as the carbon can stain skin and clothing.
• Sweep up the cooled residue and rinse the area with water if needed.

Although the reaction is relatively small, adult supervision is recommended and flammable materials should be kept at a safe distance.

Why the Snake Expands Instead of Explodes

Unlike explosive fireworks, black snakes burn relatively slowly. The reaction produces gases, mainly carbon dioxide and water vapor, but the gases escape gradually through the soft, expanding carbon structure. Molten sugar traps some of the gas bubbles, causing the material to foam and stretch upward into a snake-like shape rather than bursting apart.

The expanding ash is lightweight and porous, which is why the finished snake often looks dry, crumbly, and fragile.

Why Baking Soda Is Important

Baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) is the ingredient that makes the snake grow. When heated, it decomposes into sodium carbonate, carbon dioxide gas, and water vapor. The gases inflate the hot sugar mixture much like carbon dioxide inflates rising bread dough during baking.

Without baking soda, the sugar would mostly melt, caramelize, and burn instead of forming a long carbon snake.

Best Fuel Choices

Different fuels slightly change the appearance and performance of the black snake:

Using too much fuel can cause the mixture to burn too quickly, while too little fuel may prevent ignition.

Why the Snake Turns Black

The black color comes primarily from carbon produced during incomplete combustion of sugar. Instead of burning completely into carbon dioxide and water, some of the sugar decomposes into elemental carbon and carbon-rich compounds.

This carbon forms the lightweight ash that gives the firework its characteristic snake appearance.

Troubleshooting Black Snake Fireworks

Environmental Note

Homemade black snakes produce far less smoke, noise, and toxic residue than many commercial fireworks. Traditional snake fireworks historically used compounds such as mercury thiocyanate, which released toxic mercury compounds during combustion. The sugar-and-baking-soda version is much safer and more environmentally friendly, although the smoke still contains soot and combustion products that should not be inhaled directly.

Related Projects

You can ignite calcium supplements for another safe and simple black snake firework.

Other types of snake fireworks use ingredients that are not safe outside of a fume hood in a chemistry lab.

• Sulfuric acid and sugar snake: This classic chemistry demonstration illustrates the dehydration of sugar by sulfuric acid. It’s basically a giant black snake firework. Because of the sulfuric acid, it’s best reserved for science classes.
• Pharaoh’s serpent: Pharaoh’s serpent is the name of the classic black snake firework. Igniting a pellet of mercury thiocyanate forms a brown “snake.” Black snakes you purchase at a fireworks store no longer use this chemical because of mercury toxicity. However, you might still see this reaction as a chemistry demonstration.

References

• Davis, T. L. (1940). “Pyrotechnic Snakes”. Journal of Chemical Education. 17 (6): 268–270. doi:10.1021/ed017p268
• Miller, Thomas S.; et al. (2017). “Pharaoh’s Serpents: New Insights into a Classic Carbon Nitride Material”. Zeitschrift für anorganische und allgemeine Chemie. 643(21): 1572-1580. doi:10.1002/zaac.201700268