Apr 4, 2008

Balloon Party Tricks

Posted in Science at 1:00 pm by David Bradley -- 2 Comments; add your comment

Unlike Monday’s wind power video, this one is no joke. In fact it’s testament to the strength of balloon rubber, the force of gravity, fluid mechanics, and high-speed photography. The clip lasts about 32 seconds, but the actual action is taking place in a fraction of that time. Recorded on a Photron
ultima APX at 2000 frames per second. If you view the original high-quality clip you can use the play controller to scroll through the video slowly and observe each stage of the process at your leisure.

“I do so love it when water balloons distort themselves for our viewing pleasure. This one certainly did not disappoint in that regard. The water balloon can be seen undulating in a very odd fashion prior to its equally odd compression and explosion.”

There are a lot of similarly high-speed clips on the makers’ site at http://www.lucidmovement.com/, including a burning lightbulb, a cannonball landing in a pond, compressed air blasted into water, a scanner being dropped from a great height, a jiggling electric light filament, a gasoline (petrol) fireball, a woman running etc etc. There’s a whole category on balloon fun, you get the picture (pardon the pun).

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