The long-standing human fascination with pyrotechnics is the topic of this Nova video. Beginning with alchemists in China searching for eternal life - and having their concoction blow up in their faces - through black powder experiments by Roger Bacon, Alfred Nobel ’s nitroglycerine and physicist Robert Oppenheimer ’s work on the atomic bomb, this study concludes with a bang - the destruction of military weapons. Written, produced and directed by David Dugan; narrated by Stacy Keach. Close d captioned.