When most of us think "fireworks," we think of brilliant bursts of light and color we've seen paint ... As the firework ascends through the air, the time-delay fuse continues to burn.

And a “cake” is a firework with multiple launch tubes that are lit from a single fuse and chain-fused together so they go off sequentially, he told McClatchy News in a Jan. 2 phone call.

Once the firework is at the pinnacle of its trip, that lit fuse ignites a burst charge that ... while shells are locked in to a single trajectory. Nowadays fireworks are typically shot off ...

A firework is an icon of synergism, in which the end result is greater than the individual effects. Yet where most of us see the whole—the brilliant light and vivid color of a successful burst ...