An easy home experiment is to get a gas flame, like in the stovetop that is blue and sprink a little of table salt. The important part is the sodium that gives the flame a very strong yellow color.

Salts without sodium give other colors. IIRC cooper gives a green color. This is used by firecrackers makers to get nice colors, and also in the chemistry lab to detect the composition of some salts.

After studding this king of stuff for a few centuries, we have a very good idea of how each element changes the color of the flame, or absorbs some colors of the light that pass trough the mist.