Explosions, fire and ash filled a Faraday Hall auditorium Wednesday night, to the delight of the 100-plus people in attendance.

NIU’s chemistry department and the NIU Chem Club hosted the chemistry demonstration, which coincided with “Mole Day,” the focal point of National Chemistry week.

This is the fourth year that the chemistry department has organized the event.

“This whole series of chemistry demonstrations is the brain child of Chris Simkus,” said David Ballantine, an associate professor of chemistry. “Chris is a graduate student, he’s been here four years and really really likes doing this stuff.”

Simkus created the event to help make chemistry more engaging and relevant to everyday life.

“I actually started this because, when I got here, the students weren’t as tuned to chemistry,” he said. “So I put demos together and they seem to really enjoy it. So it’s something that we’ve done every semester since.”

Each year, National Chemistry Week carries a different theme.

“The theme of National Chemistry week is ‘Chemistry Keeps Us Clean,’” Simkus said. “So, a lot of the things we’re doing have to do with soaps. We’re doing a lot of stuff with bubbles.”

There were 10 demonstrations at last night’s event. They ranged from examples of silver-cleaning chemicals to more explosive demonstrations of homemade hydrogen rockets.

The audience, many of whom were children, applauded the flashier presentations.

But, the event was popular with the older crowd as well.

“I came to see this because I’m going to be teaching next year,” senior chemistry major Steve Matthies said. “I haven’t seen these demonstrations before. I’ve seen them in books and stuff, so it was nice to actually visually see them.”

Event organizers held the program on Oct. 23, known to chemists as Mole Day, for a specific reason.

“Mole day is based upon one of the more important values of chemical calculations, the mole,” Simkus said. “And it happens to have the numbers 10 and 23, so that’s why Mole Day is when it is.”