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Photographing Exploding Edibles
Isaac Skibinski writes "Remember gawking at photos of bullets going through apples (and the pretty fruit gibbage)? We've recently built an apparatus to capture similar results, using a BASIC controller stamp, a disposable camera flash, an air compressor, an electronic sprinkler valve and some pipe. Considering the cost of the device, it has allowed us to take suprisingly crisp photos of high-velocity objects."
Considering the cost of the device, it has allowed us to take suprisingly crisp photos of high-velocity objects.
Funding for this research was provided by porn co.
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In London? Need a Physics Tutor?
American Weblog in London
How many times he heard his mom screaming "STOP PLAYING WITH THE FOOD!"
If you want any of these pictures in a larger format, take a look here You really are just begging and pleading for a ./ing aren't you?
there are similar highspeed captures and a lot more fantastic photography and articles in this book from the swedish Karolinska Institute (http://www.imagesinscience.com) sadly only available from http://kup.ki.se/publications/images_sciences_en.h tml
A button is hit, telling the micro-controller to open the valve, thus releasing the pressure and sending the waiting bolt hurdling forth at around 150 m/sec
His ping times suck!
Sent from your iPad.
There is a lot of information on building a sound-triggered system at http://www.hiviz.com/, along with some photos.
There's got to be a research project in here somewhere... "Citrus Fruits and Their Implosion Properties". Maybe Apple would sponsor it.
SCO, Microsoft, P2P, what's your hot button?
don't sit too close to the end of the barrel, like Isaac did.
That's not so bad. The real Isaac stuck a knife in his eye just to see what would happen.
--
In London? Need a Physics Tutor?
American Weblog in London
using a BASIC controller stamp, a disposable camera flash, an air compressor, an electronic sprinkler valve and some pipe
MacGyver got a new hobby....but where's the duct tape???
wouldn't it be amusing to take one of these films of a modern CD drive shattering an early 1990s era CD rom with poor balancing? ;-)
And I thought my circuit boards hacks were messy!
Gesundheit!
Just in case I ever wanted to know how to take a picture of exploding fruit... just the kind of thing I've always wondered how to do.
Seriously, it IS pretty cool though.
It must be Thursday... I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
They are using a nail gun in what seems to be a garage or a basement... I wonder if they ever considered what would happen if the shot would miss the carpet they put behind.. to put it in their own words, the bolt could "go across the room, bounce off of various objects, and become swiftly lodged into our soft brains".
For better security, I would suggest automating the whole process a bit further, get out of the room and see the results when done... but may be I'm just paranoid...
DrkBr
I'm sure it has lot of uses, apart from taking pictures of exploding food. Maybe the military could use it to confirm kills? When somebody is exploded, they could automatically take photo to make sure the enemy is dead.
Or if camera in public places could take photos automatically when people shoot guns, so that they can get pictures of murderers faces? Kind of like a speed camera, but for shooting.
Please be understanding that English is not my first language, Thank you ^_^.
Drat - you beat me by seconds! <doffs hat>
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=93845&cid=805These sigs are more interesting tha
I can see it now..
"Ok, We'll need a disposable camera flash, an air compressor, an electronic sprinkler valve, and some pipe. This is gonna be a killer bong, man! Oh wait... look what else we can do with all this stuff!"
'When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.' -HST
Honestly, If you're going to build a homemade weapon, build a railgun.
Badass Resumes
Who was the photographer who made this type of photography famous? I think it was as early as the 40s or 30s or something.... My dad had a coffee table book of his work. The name escapes me, though.
This has potential - kebab-making for the extreme sports enthusiast.
If I remember correctly, he used a camera with an open shutter in a darkened room, triggering the strobe with the sound of the muzzle blast and an electronic delay.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I built one of those slave flash thingies somewhere in the mid '80s ... combined it with a microphone and a old Praktica reflex camera...
(total kit was about $80 worth of cam and electronics...)
I had about the same results, only then using black and white photo's.
I think I am going to start one of those sites too. I am just as much a nerd as these guys!
My thoughts start heading toward what other fun (AND educational ;-) ) things can be done with the strobe photography rig besides blowing up fruit...
(I think I see $40 leaving my wallet in the very near future)
The bodkin is more likely to have been something like a knitting needle (see here if you have an OED subscription).
I know it's dumb, but I sometimes I wish I could go back to those days of having such little responsibilities and being entertained so easily ...
How to REALLY defend yourself against an attacker bearing fresh fruit!! Using a bolt gun is cool, but I wonder if they could rework the system to be used with a cannon...
~~ Everyone run! All has been found out!
There was a story awhile back about an exploding jawbreaker I wonder if you could make some kind of candy powered musket...
Eat at Joe's.
I just viewed ALL the photos on the site BEFORE it got slasdotted! Where's my award?!
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Heh. You have no idea how embarrasing that is. :)
In my defense, I haven't seen it for about ten years (and in any case, I prefered the A-team). In my haste to be the first person on the thread to post the joke, I didn't bother to check how it was spelled. Just to add insult to injury, I failed miserably anyway because Orion442 got there first.
<prepares for serious karma-drubbing>
These sigs are more interesting tha
Maybe tidy up the "lab" a little next time? You are being /.'d after all.
Watching an exploding lemon, caught endlessly in the throes of passionate destruction, well...it feels a little pornographic, doesn't it?
He was a MIT professor, prolific inventor, artist and by all acounts an incredibly nice person.
He's also responsible for one of my favorite quotes:
Work like hell
Tell everyone everything you know
Close a dread with a handshake
Have fun
I give it a month before somebody kills themselves with it at a party whilst trying to perform some trick involving the device, a keg, and someone doing a kegstand atop it.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Stereo images. Splatter in 2D is nice, but splatter in 3D is heavenly.
friends may have ideas that you don't agree with, but as any Gemini knows, it's all about compromise. By the end of the month, you will have learned something very important that will change how you view the world and, most importantly, yourself.
These guys went through all that trouble and are only shooting a nail through a cracker? Come on, there are so many cooler things then that.
/. poll.
- Nail into water ballon
- Nail through fragile glass
- Nail into steel (watch nail bend)
- Nail into neighbors cat (okay, maybe not such a good idea)
We could even make it a
Back, and to the left.
Back, and to the left.
Back, and to the left.
Quite obviously the grapefruit was shot from somewhere else, and you're just trying to set up the poor BASIC controller as a patsy.
The Slashdot Paradox: "100% Overrated"
I am just as much a nerd as these guys!
/. (Unless you have some Uber-MIT-bandwith).
In the mid '80s I was around 5 years old - Please share your nerd exploits with the younger generation so we can bask in your geekiness and strive for perfection.
No, seriously, please do put a site up. Just let me know before it gets posted on
My sig sucks.
This is Slashdot Performance Art at its acme--I nominate it for the Hall of Fame!
****
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
I *SO* hope my son ends up doing stuff like this when he gets older. At least this project produced some cool arguably scientific evidence. We only ended up with messes or trying to figure out good alibis.
Exploding edibles, what's it all about? Is it good, or is it whack?
This a good example of modern times: "digital is better" and it reminds me of those Nikon, Canon, etc. ads in the early eighties about their lenses being designed "with computers". So then they should be better, yeah.....
If you need a 5 ms delay, why not simply use an RC circuit (for the new kids on the block: that's a resistor and capacitor) and if you really want to "go digital", a simple 50 cents 78xx or 40xx counter chip would have done the trick. Mmm, but if you're grown up only knowing that you need a computer to play music, than you can expect this type of overkill.
Anyway, I still love projects like these, even when they are done already thousands times before.
Browsers shouldn't have a back button!! It's all about going forward...
I have an uncle who assists police with forensics work (he's a dentist during the day, but the town he lives in is small and they need all the help they can get).
One thing that stumped the police was a scene where a single bullet came through the windshield of a car and hit the driver.
That in itself wasn't surprising. What was surprising is that the back of the guy's head got completely blown off - a really huge hole that they couldn't explain at first.
So they did an experiment using high-speed film/camera in a lab, where they got a few windshields to play with and a few human skull mockups, and a gun with bullets of the same make/model as the one they've identified.
I saw a copy of (one of the) pictures they took, which was quite amazing (yet horrifying if you think what happened) - a giant cone of glass shards projecting outwards from where the bullet entered the windshield. The cone was small near the front of the driver's head, but while passing through the skull it continued on its outward path and blew a massive hole in the back.
Scary stuff.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
A friend and I once built a sprinkler-valve based widget that was quite impressive. In our first test, however, we left the barrel off, and the resulting pressure wave nearly deafened us. Those valves flow pretty well...
You know how they tell you to shoot stuff into a hanging blanket, because it 'catches' the object? Our first 'victim', a magic marker, went THROUGH the blanket and was never seen again.
We developed the world's fastest(and messiest) french fry maker(use your imagination- sporting goods involved)...shot a 4-foot broom handle a couple hundred feet into the air and down his yard(looked like a mini-cruise-missile)...discovered it made an excellent fire extinguisher(fill barrel with water, cork, aim, blammo- between the gust of air and the water/steam, you could do a serious number a good sized fire with just two cups of water)...etc. You could even launch cylinders of compressed snow(trick is to compress it enough that it doesn't disintegrate on launch, but doesn't hurt anyone/anything when it impacts..although ice rods looked awesome fired at a brick wall).
The best was when my friend's parents got home. His mother walked out onto the porch first. "Oh my GOD, what are you DOING?" His father followed, saw the compressor, air tanks, etc..."Oh cool, whatcha guys doin'?" :-)
Please help metamoderate.
I don't think Gallagher's Sledge-o-matic has anything to worry about.
Sierra Tango Foxtrot Uniform
Is it bad that my first thought was "Newton or Asimov"?
Not that bad. You could have thought of the bartender from Love Boat.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Here are some pictures taken by high school students.
Hmm Im thinking that if they managed to build this for 40 dollars, adding more digital cameras in a circular array one could make some very nice 3d rotating views of the aforementioned fleshy fruits exploding.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
For a brief moment I thought "Forget the camera, get an exorcist!"
Paul Lenhart writes words!
Here's another:
Ydco co
Stereo animated GIF!
The only thing better than 3D splatter is rotating 3D splatter.
Did it occur to any one that the use of the BASIC stamp was over kill. I'll agree it makes the project a little bit easier but these guys are MIT students. All you seriously need is a photo sensor, a transistor, an op-amp and a relay. Very simple. The only tricky part is that using this simple circuit would require precious placement of the photo sensor. This shouldn't be a problem if you know the velocity of the projectile which they know. You'd think some MIT nerds would have done it this way which is a little more elegant.
Only these guys used real guns, no some sissy PVC contraption: http://www.bitpress.com/dc/ The 7 cans is my favorite. :)
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
I wonder if one could use two photoresistive sensors in front of the barrel, such that the projectile first passes one, and then the other.
The time between when the two photo sensors are passed would indicate (with a simple calculation) the speed of the projectile -- which could then be used to calculate precisely when the flash should go off.
... for the advances in high speed photography!
http://www.rit.edu/~andpph/exhibit-3.html
My favourite is the playing card shot half
Rover photos and exlploding fruit...
/.
After all the RIAA, Patriot Act, SCO, Microsoft, Linux legal articles it is nice to relish in why we keep coming back to
Not since the highspeed CD-ROM spinning has there been something as geeky neat as this...
1. 8 year old male
2. All-syrup squishee. Add caffeine to taste
3. Hand the kid the camera.
That should be enough for the kid's reflexes to match this elaborate setup.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
At first, i really thought it said:
Phtotgraphing Exploding Bibles.
Weird thoughts about Palestinian Suicide Bombers crossed my mind.
The musselmen are never innocent, you just have to watch the wrestling for five minutes to see them cheating all the time!
Cartman: No, Marvin, those are not for eating, they are for making photos while we make them explode!
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Harold Edgarton also has book published about his work called "Stopping Time". The photos are amazing. He did so much more than shooting bullets through cards and apples. My favorite is the pictures in the back of the book from an atomic bomb test. He was able to capture images of the explosion from several miles away as the fireball grew from a small ball engulfing the top of the metal tower on which the bomb sat to a ball that then englufed the tower and began reaching the ground.
Simply amazing photos in his book.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
Using a quite similar approach, the guys from Frozen Reality take even more immpresive Pictures in 3D.
Their system is built from 8 identical digital cameras set up in a half-circle around the target object, all triggered by a single flash.
The images are processed my a morphing program and create stunning movies of exploding balloons, a metal ball crushing a stone plate etc.
.....then take a look at this =)
t os .html
http://courses.ncssm.edu/hsi/pacsci/student_pho
I decided, at my 8-year-old's insistence, to build a tennis ball thrower for my 2 year old Yellow Lab. I went and found some parts - basically two 2-foot lengths of 2" PVC, some various PVC connectors, a switch box with a 9 volt battery, all wired to a sprinkler valve between the two pieces of PVC. It looked like an awkward "U" of PVC and electronics taped together.
One of the PVC tubes had an endcap with a welding pressure guage threaded into it, along with a brass air valve. The PVC was rated at something like 400 psi. But, I figured, for my test, I would stick to something low, like around 35 or 40.
So, I'm out in the garage, dog anxiously at my side, filling up the pressure tube to about 45 psi. I let it sit, stood back, and everything seemed to hold well for about 60 seconds, so I thought, "Yeah, this is safe. Cool!"
I started looking around for the tennis ball I've brought with me to take it outside and try it. I turned around to pick it up off the floor, and there was this HORRENDOUS BOOM!!! followed by some crashing around and various things falling off of shelves.
I collect my thoughts, and after making sure all my limbs and digits are still on, I look over at the garage door. There is a large, pumpkin-sized dent in the door - about 5 inches deep - with a beautiful hole about the size of the $40 pressure guage at the center of it.
I looked around for the dog, who'd been at my side, and found nothing but a cute little urine trail off into the corner of the garage where the dog was cowering.
Jesus. What the hell happened?!? Apparently, the glue wasn't quite dried on the PVC - it was only about an hour old, and the end of the pipe blew off, putting a huge dent in my garage door, and blowing the rest of the contraption back across the shop, knocking down canning jars and various stored things.
So, I coaxed the dog out of the garage for a few minutes, and walked out into the sunlight to shake my head and give up on this, and hear, "Hello?!? Everyone OK?!" It was a COP!
Apparently several people had called about the shotgun/explosion/whatever and the cop was highly concerned. Nothing like seeing a cop, gun drawn, coming aroudn the corner of your house.
Anyway, I was told in no uncertain terms that it was illegal to play with any of this stuff (yes, even only compressed air) within city limits, and...well...I can see why.
Poor dog. I just throw the ball, these days.
Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
On low output the duration of a pretty standard flash should be of the order of 1/30,000 second. The awkward part is synchronising the camera so it exposes at the right time. An infra-red beam coupled with a variable delay circuit ought to do, though you might want to use a SLR where you can lock up the mirror so as to reduce shutter latency.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
So that's what they call it these days?
Unless he managed to get the bolt to leap over hurdles on its way to the target, no, they call it "hurtling".
Alas, those who learn to spell words only by hearing them pronounced incorrectly will continue to make these kinds of mistakes (and teach others to make the same mistake in both speech and text) until corrected.
of Minor Destruction
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
Anyone know where I can get my digital mitts on some of these pictures (especially the linked Bullet-Through-Apple one) large enough to use as a desktop background?
I have no sig yet I must scream.
WARNING: Parent's link needs QUICKTIME!
-Mikey
also see the index page for this set at Photographs by Andrew Davidhazy
PVC is X-ray transparent. Hard to find in your flesh.
PVC shatters like glass, and is almost as sharp. I cut myself on a shard of broken PVC from a homemade tool a couple of weeks ago. It was so sharp I didn't notice until I saw the blood on my work, wondering where it came from.
In case of failure, think multiple exploratory surgeries. Often people trying to make noisemakers (pipe bombs or destructive devices to the FBI) end up with bits of glass sharp PVC as permanent companions.
Also don't forget about cumulative stresses and invisible damage. Typically this sort of device is wrapped in tape & wire, or even enclosed, in addition to being very overbuilt. Imagine if your PVC had been abused at the hardware store, and you didn't know it.
You don't have to be in the same room while this is fired. I wouldn't the first time.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
Lets see, I was about 7 years old, playing in the field behind our house setting ants on fire with a magnifying glass. It was a dry summer and at some point the field itself caught fire. All the neighborhood came from all around to put out the fire with hoses and shovels and blankets. It burned about 2 acres before we finally got it all out.
Lots of angry people marched me to my door and told me to go inside and tell my mother what I had done. It turns out that even though she was sitting by the window, she was on the phone with the TV on and never noticed. When I tried to tell her she laughed and to this day doesn't believe it ever happened.
Cool stuff. Emphasis here was on the Exploding aspect. The Photography was a bit of an afterthought - otherwise they'd have put a sheet below & behind the objects!
To shorten the pulse length you need to quench the main xenon tube earlier. One way to do this might be to put a smaller flash lamp (available at radio shack?) in series with a smallish capacitor and put those in parallel to the main flash lamp. The goal is to trigger the smaller flash lamp as a turn off circuit, it will divert the current into the small capacitor which will drop the voltage across the main flash lamp causing it to stop conducting. The small capacitor will rapidly charge and hence little energy would be used in turning off the circuit.
Strobe Faq
Now that you have a main trigger and a quench trigger, you can have your BASIC stamp control the flash duration. A normal flash lasts a millisecond or so, you could probably put this flash very close to your target (perhaps with some plexiglas to protect it) and trigger the flash for say 50-200 microseconds instead giving a much faster stop-motion (though darker picture).
Crank up the CCD sensitivity and bring the flash close and you'd be all set.
Alternatively you could use a pre-built "auto flash" and replace the light sensor with a output line from the BASIC stamp. This would cost more, but be easier from a construction standpoint since the quench design is debugged already.
You may have to put some tape over the sensor, and open the case and control the quench with a clip lead.
((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) http://www.endpointcomputing.com a scientific approach to custom computing.
Heck, a high-school buddy and I did photos at least as good as these in the early 80's with much less equipment. Similar concept though. We used a inexpensive SLR, slave flash and a pellet gun. Position everything, turn off the lights, oprn the shutter, shoot the gun (bang! ) close the shutter. Repeat until out of film and/or food. The trick for the whole thing was the trigger mechanism. Great success was had with a thin/tough steel plate hanging in front of a nail. The idea was to swing the plate backwards a very small distance to touch the nail and close a circuit to fire the flash. In photos taken 90 degrees to the plane of the plate, the plate pretty much disappears. The concept is that the pellet striking the target moved the food just enough to touch the plate and then fire the flash. We managed to get some shots actually capturing the deformed lead pellet in mid-air. Huge fun and amazement for all. I do applaud the STAMP implementation...the fun factor of blasting food has clearly not been lost!
Nice to see that Gallagher is keeping up with technology. :)
--Nick
Fruit doing spit takes.
Card cut photo has been found. Compare this one with how much the ritz cracker moved.
The url is http://www.afterimagegallery.com/dledgerton.htm
The truth shall set you free!
considered edible for these purposes? :-/
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
why not just use a bright lamp or spotlight? turn it on before firing, turn it off when done. then you wouldn't need any flash triggering or hardware. what am i missing?
They should have used the walgreens digital cameras that we've read so much about for added geek points. As it is, I give them a 9.8! Go Isaac, Damon, and Reid!
how fast SCO is going out of business?
Or how fast Microsoft is going to follow?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
At least he made the resulting photos pleasing to look at before having them shown to the masses... having plain backgrounds, nice lighting etc.
The ones in this article look quite frankly shite, with bits of apparatus hanging around etc.
Sure, your test shots can have that kind of junk around, but if you want to impress people put up a damn sheet or something people!
Here and here and here.
Serve Gonk.
This is REALLY the way to defend yourself against an attacker bearing fresh fruit!!
~~ Everyone run! All has been found out!
I was hoping there would be a shot of SCO senior management being impaled against a wall, alas not.
Most of them are still alive. :-)
Matrix-style "bullet-time" videos of exploiting fruit.
The shareholder is always right.
Ages ago, the Digital Western Research Lab (which became Compaq and then merged into HP Labs) had a technical note and video along these lines... quite funny.
Mencken had it right. So glad that's old news.
talking about fools: nah... you better learn Dutch first. I guess you would be one of those typical USians: no foreign language skills AT ALL since to you it seems there is only one country in existence...
hmm... might do, but the 80's was not the period wher I documented a lot. I do not have the actual electronics any more either... so it would be just some pics and nothing more.