Black powder

Black powder is a special kind of powder that people used a long time ago to make explosions. It's made up of three things: charcoal, sulfur, and something called saltpeter.

Charcoal is what you get when you burn wood really slowly or cook it in a special way. It looks like black rocks or pieces of wood that are very light and easy to break.

Sulfur is a kind of yellow powder that smells bad, like rotten eggs or bad gas. People use it to make medicine or to help make things burn better.

The last thing, saltpeter, is something that comes from rocks. It looks sort of like sugar and is pretty salty-tasting. It was used a long time ago to make things taste better, like meat or other food.

When you mix all three of these things together, you get black powder. People used to put it in little tubes called "fuse." They'd light the end of the fuse and then throw the tube to make a loud boom. This was way before we had things like rockets or fireworks.

Nowadays, we don't really use black powder very much because it's not very safe to handle. There are lots of other things we use to make explosions, like dynamite or gasoline. But some people still like to use black powder for special things, like historical reenactments or making cool firework effects.