Burning old Sparklers: Getting ideas and bringing them to life

My daughter found a box of sparklers out of somewhere in the garage last night and she wanted to use them. I could not remember how long we had purchased them. I told her I didn't think they would work but we might as well try. So we did. Some of them sparked and fizzled out after a moment. Some wouldn't even light. We made our way through the box without much luck. For whatever reason, the very last one burst into brilliant green light and danced all the way to the bottom of stick!