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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."
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
There is a lot of information on building a sound-triggered system at http://www.hiviz.com/, along with some photos.
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
Harold Edgerton. He was an MIT professor at some point during his career. Here is a photo that he was asked to take of an atomic bomb being detonated.
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
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.
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.
well, this is hosted on the mit.edu web server. i would hope that of all web servers on earth, mit's could survive a slashdotting.
That's just BS dude. I've worked in my share of factories, and "Nail Gun Wars" is always a fun hobby. The _ONLY_ way a nail gun will pierce flesh is if it's held within 3 ft. and fired, and more and it will harmlessly bounce off of you. (Safety glasses were worn, yes!). I fondly remember my best hit, over 20 ft, and the nail lodged in the guys hair, it went right through the hole in the front of his hat (from wearing a baseball cap backwards) and stuck there pointing out, lodged in his hair. By your logic, he should have been dead 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.