Fireworks are a staple of Independence Day, but someone way back when, in my state, put a nasty ban on anything that goes up in the air and explodes. Fortunately, you can still go out-of-state to get these things, but there's an awesome substitution.

My local grocery store sells packets of small fireworks cheap, and I mean real cheap. Things that are usually almost a hundred dollars are now less that twenty. So, every year, I make sure that I have a stock of fireworks. Of course, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, they are not by any means huge. They light up different colors, but we're lucky if they go eight feet into the air.

Some of these fireworks are cylindrical in shape, and explode the same way for almost a minute. Now, these are pretty boring compared to other ones, and we always get a lot. The best part about it is that if you get a letter-opener and just the right angle, you can get all of the black powder that's stuffed into these things. It's a lot. Now, multiply this by, say, five or eight fireworks, and you get a lot of black powder. I'll pour these explosives into a gallon-sized milk bottle (with the top off, of course), and light a fuse leading into it. Doing this before with less than three yields a thirty-foot-high explosion. I have yet to to see what this many will do. B)