Slashdot Mirror
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.
--
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???
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
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)
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.
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!
I just viewed ALL the photos on the site BEFORE it got slasdotted! Where's my award?!
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
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
Stereo images. Splatter in 2D is nice, but splatter in 3D is heavenly.
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
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
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.
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.
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'
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.
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
So you need a five ms electronic delay. Do you:
1) Write a short program using a microcontroller you already have.
2) Go out and buy some electronics and build a little delay circuit.
Would you really forego the simpler solution just because it's 'overkill'?
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
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.
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.
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.
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.