Materials
A shallow 10″ pan.
Water.
A can of compressed air.

Procedure
Hold the air can nozzle about 4-6″ away from the pan at a fairly low angle, perhaps 30 degrees or so. Fire away.

Observations
This is a fun look at how water and air interact when the air is under high-pressure. You can see how the air gets under the water and forms large bubbles as it displaces the water. The way in which the bubbles burst is quite interesting to look at. The waves and ripples in the water are also very interesting to observe. I love how chaotic the whole effect is.

Materials
My wife….sorry, you’ll have to use your own. I suppose a girlfriend or a female friend/model might work as well.
A wheat field.

Observations
This one is great for a number of reasons, some of which for me are purely personal, though many are independent of the person. I’ll focus on the ones that don’t involve me gushing about my wife. This shot involves all kinds of dynamic goodness. The movement of the dress and hair are both fascinating to watch. You can also observe how the dress interacts with the legs as she runs. It is also incredibly interesting to study the movement of the muscles and skin as she runs. My wife doesn’t jiggle visibly when she walks, at least not to the naked eye, so it is fascinating to see how much the average body actually moves when we are in motion. I plan to do a series of bodies in motion against a gridded background so we can more closely study how much flex and give there is in the human body.

Materials
Plastic jar of mayo.
An aluminum baseball bat.

Observations
This one is neat from the aspect of seeing how built up pressure in a vessel escapes. As one would expect it takes the path of least resistance, this being the cap. But interestingly enough it also comes out of the bottom of the jar. That was a bit unexpected. I like the path of the spray itself and wish the camera had been set back a bit.

Materials
A paint ball.
A bb gun.
A stand of some kind. In this case a 2-liter bottle.
The standard black backdrop.

Procedure
Place the paint ball on the stand and shoot it.

Result
I slowed this one down to 25% of its original speed so we could get an opportunity to see what was actually going on. This is a pretty fascinating shot and one I plan to recapture with a faster camera, this would be excellent in the 2-5K fps range. The fluid flow is just amazing to look at, the twisting of the strands before it starts its spin, the splash as the bb hits it. We can tell from the way it spins that the bb just grazed the paintball. This is definitely a shot you want to step through frame at a time to really see what is going on.

Materials
One old broken Dell computer.
A sledge hammer.

Observations
This video is filled with all kinds of goodness. I love the flex we get to see in the fiberglass handle of the sledge hammer. The dust bunnies uprooted from their home is also incredibly interesting. It is amazing the amount of dust that builds up in these things. I also like to see the plastic flexing as the hammer comes down on it.