I got a message in my youtube inbox a bit ago from Dr. Dave, one of the foremost people doing home brew high-speed filming and one of my sources of inspiration announcing his new DVD. Dr. Dave has a great sense of humor and takes a look at a lot of fascinating things. Take a look at the following video for a sample of what can be found on the DVD.
At the present time we are completely and totally stocked with clips that have already been, in some form or another, posted. What this means precisely is that we are out of clips for the posting at the moment. I am in the process of scrambling to find another camera with which to film. Keep your RSS feeds running and hopefully in the next period of undetermined time there will be some more clips. This should have been posted Sunday, but I was busy with something not entirely but almost completely unrelated to this site, namely helping my wife prepare for her trip to Korea. Hopefully things will be back up and running in jig time. I’ll post as soon as I have anything and if I happen to find anything interesting out there related to high-speed cameras I’ll happily post it. Now would be an excellent time to reminisce by perusing the hundred or so other clips that have already been posted. There really are a few neat ones there, ones that might even bear watching more than once, most especially if you happen to be new to the site and haven’t seen them yet.
Share and Enjoy:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Today we take a look at another water splash caused by compressed air.
Materials
Water, pan, air can.
Observations
I think this one may be my favorite of this series. I especially like the big vapor bubble that forms in the back, camera left. The globules of water floating through air look neat too. The pattern of the splash is so unlike a normal splash in these instances.
Today we have another shot of a light bulb burning itself out and the smoke exiting from a small hole.
Materials
60watt Black light bulb.
Procedure
Create a hole in the bulb. I used a dremel tool to take care of that.
Result
The filament heats up and then proceeds to produce a thick (pleasant looking) smoke before burning out.
Observations
I like this one because you get to see the smoke contained by a barrier, while at the same time you get to see a limited amount escape and curl around the barrier. The smoke is also rather pretty in and of itself.
Additional notes
If it looks like I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel for my clips, it would be because I am. I am currently in-between cameras so I’m searching through things I’ve not posted in the past because I had better clips to post. Hopefully this situation will change in the near future.
This is another shot of Matt Deal (of Matt Deal Farms fame) jumping off of a deck into a pond.
Materials
A dock and a pond.
Procedure
Instruct a man to jump off a dock. It is quite amazing what one can get people to do if one has a camera. People seem to feel quite natural and somewhat fearless in front a camera. I can’t explain it, though it would be interesting to listen to someone who can. Perhaps one of our readers is a psychologist and can illuminate this for us.
Observations
This shot is another great look at the muscles of a well toned person. The subject in question has over years of farming toned his body up quite completely. Makes for an excellent video subject for a study in bio-mechanics. I plan on subject Matt to many more indignities over the years for your viewing pleasure. Next time I think I’ll make him take a few swings with a bat at a small, round moving object. Again, the splash is wonderful as usual. The light catches it all nicely. Poor Matt in this shot was unaware that the pond was only a few feet deep, much to his surprise. Sadly I don’t have enough disk space to export the entire clip (yes I filled up yet another hard drive, over 1TB of data now!) but I still have the original so when my new drive shows up I’ll re-export this shot and do a close up on his rather surprised face. It is quite amusing.
Today we take a closer look at a video we posted a while ago. In this video we have pushed in to put you right at the center of the explosion. There is enough detail to actually watch the vectors of the fluid movement.
Materials
We can skip this, if you don’t know how to make this already, you don’t need to be making it.
Procedure
Detonate using electronic detonation.
Result
This is a crop of the previous video found here. This puts you right in the center of the raging fireball. You can see the movement of the fireball fairly clearly in this video. It is interesting to note how the flames move and evolve. At speeds like this you really get a chance to see things that are ordinarily invisible to the eye, the motion and formation of the fireball being one of those things.
Today we take a look at a printer my daughter tossed off of a concrete wall.
Materials
A dead printer, copier, scanner thingy.
Procedure
If you have a youngin’ you can skip the following steps….actually we’ll skip those steps entirely as I don’t feel up to writing a biology lesson. Have your youngin’ climb up to the top of the concrete wall, pass up the printer and give them the command they’ve been waiting for their entire lives. “Go ahead, toss that printer off the wall!”
Result
In short, a mess. It is interesting to see how the printer obliterates itself. If anyone had any doubts about the validity of gravity I hope this video puts their mind at ease that it is indeed still functioning to spec. The glass was obviously broken in previous attempts, as were parts of the printer, which made this one such an interesting shot. This was the third time we had dropped it. I have to say that Epson makes very sturdy printer, the first time we dropped it not a single thing broke. An eight foot fall and nothing broke. Amazing for a heavy, plastic printer like that. Anyway, enjoy the destruction.
Stumble it!
