There are traces of precious metals hiding in all kinds of things around us. There's gold in your old computer parts. There's platinum in dirt on the side of the road. Turns out there's silver in those harmless little bang snap fireworks, and a surprisingly decent amount of it too.

The thing that gives bang snaps their bang—or pop-its their pop, snappers their snap, etc—is very small amount of silver fulminate, an explosive that is very sensitive to impact, but is relatively harmless in low quantities; you'd be hard-pressed to use them to start a blaze even if you're actually trying.

What you can do, with an understanding of basic chemistry, is refine the silver out. That's exactly what DIY chemist Cody of Cody's Lab does in this fascinating little video:

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It's a pretty straight-forward process compared to, say, refining gold in your kitchen, but perhaps what's most notable is the yield here. In Cody's past experiments, the presence of precious metals has been proven, but there's generally so little that it's not even worth the cost of supplies to get it out.

One the one hand, the same thing applies here. Cody says he got 50 cents worth of silver out of 50 dollars worth of bang snaps. But, since the process works after they've already been used, you could theoretically get money for free if you had enough used ones.

It's the 5th of July, so quick, get out there before everything gets cleaned up.

Source: Cody's Lab