videos

=High Speed Videos=

Here you can view videos taken with my high-speed camera. You may also email me suggestions for other items to record at mhorton@rcoe.us. If your students would like me to record an object from your classroom, contact me via email and I will give you my address to which you may ship the item. I can put meter sticks or grids in the background to enable you to do quantitative analyses of the videos. The camera is capable of 250 frames per second so it cannot capture extremely high speed events such as bullets or explosions, but it can capture water balloons, objects breaking, etc.

If the videos look like a jumble of wavy lines, you need to change one Windows Media Player setting. 1. Choose the "Tools" menu. 2. Select "Options." 3. Select the "Performance" tab. 4. Move the Hardware Acceleration slider down and try again. Repeat if necessary.

I have a new high speed video camera and it is color and faster frame rate. I've played with it a little bit and here are some early videos:

Here, I am throwing water in my son's face at 600 frames per second (slowed down 20 times): media type="file" key="WaterFace.mov" width="300" height="300"

My daughter doing a raspberry at 600 fps: media type="file" key="KrystalRaspberry.mov" width="300" height="300"

My son hitting a homerun from a soft-toss pitch: media type="file" key="MSwing.mov"

My daughter punching my son in the stomach: media type="file" key="StomachPunch.mov"

Here's a physics toy called the Astro Blaster at 300 frames per second (slowed down 10 times)

Here's a demonstration of inertia with wooden nickels:

Here is a slinky being dropped by Dr. Maria Simani:

Here is a color version of the demonstration with the balloon and the PVC rack below with Dave Susuras:

Here is Dave Susuras dropping a PVC frame with a pendulum to see if a pendulum would swing in zero-g:

Here are two tuning forks vibrating simultaneously. The one on the left is 250 Hz and the one on the right is 125 Hz.

Here is a water dropping from a sink with the color video camera (very dark):

Here is a soda bottle rocket launching at the Science Olympiad. I'll upload another video from farther away as soon as I edit it.

Here is a video of a Chinese Water Bowl. When a person rubs their hands on the handles of the bowl, water jumps out at 4 spots around the bowl as a result of interference of the waves generated.



Here is a video of a tuning fork vibrating. You might notice that the vibrations are not perfectly in sync. One side has a hold drilled in it to allow observers to hear beat frequencies. This really is a better way of understanding how tuning forks move than using a strobe light. Strobe lights make it look like waves flow along the tuning fork, but they don't. Each side just vibrates back and forth.

Here is a video of a balloon popping. Not very useful in the classroom, but it is cool to see and is mandatory when you first get a high speed camera.

At a meeting, Pete A'hearn of Palm Springs asked, "Does the display on a stopwatch really display all of the digits on the hundredths of a second?" Here's the video that we took to answer that question. What do you think?

Thanks to Dave Susuras from Vista Del Lago High School in Moreno Valley for his help with the following three videos. Here is a device with a heavy weight attached to a pin. When the device is dropped, the inertia of the weights and the force of the rubber bands keeps it in place and the balloon comes down and hits it. Click link for video: [|balloonstep2.wmv]

Here is a hydrogen-filled balloon being ignited. Click link to play in browser: [|HBalloonStep2.wmv]

This is a "Whoosh Bottle" which is a 5 gallon water bottle with alcohol vapor in it. When a match is dropped in, the vapor ignites. When more oxygen is drawn in by the coooling vapor, it ignites over and over again. The video went on much longer, but I had to clip it to get under 20 Mb. Click link: [|WhooshFinal.wmv]

Here is a video of a toy ball with rubber "hairs" on it bouncing off of my desk at 1/125th actual speed. The file is 1.8 Mb.

This video is of a magnetic "Gauss Rifle" firing. The video shows full speed and 1/50th speed. In full speed, it looks like my hand pushes the ball. At 1/50th speed, it is clear that I wasn't even close to it.

This video is of a small water yoyo being dropped and thrown downward onto my desk. It is shown at 1/50th speed.

This is a video of a small water yoyo being dropped and thrown onto my kitchen floor: [|ThrowWaterYoYo.wmv]

This is a video of water dripping from my kitchen sink and into a bowl of water. [|WaterDrip.wmv]