September 07, 2007

And You Think Your Camera is Good

Alright, today was my first meeting with the pistol team and it's looking like it'll be a ton of fun! The reason for this post (and the title) is because of what's going on in the rifle range right now. A graduate student is doing some research with bullets hitting water and is recording it with a high speed camera. How high speed? Well, let me put it this way: this camera is so specialized that only two exist in the entire country. The Navy is paying for him to rent it for a couple of weeks, at $5,000 a week. How many frames per second? 1,000,000. That's right, 1,000,000 frames per second!

This camera is so important that it was featured in Engadget not too long ago. Here are some videos of some movies it's made:


Breaking Concrete


Popping Water Balloon


Water Jet


I am constantly amazed at the amazingly cool things I randomly find all over this campus, this place never ceases to amaze me. Oh, and did I mention that there was more free food today at a "Fancy High Tech Company Recruiting MIT Students" bbq? Microsoft, Oracle, and a bunch of other people were trying to woo us. That meant a free t-shirt for me!

I'll blog more later, as you can tell by the timestamp, I should be sleeping, I have physics at 9 tomorrow morning (which is the earliest time slot for classes.)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I never thought that watching a concrete pillar blast apart would A) be so incredible or B) make me want to go to MIT.

Paul said...

Psh, bed at 12:30? We'll be used to far worse before long. :D

Anyway, those are some wicked videos, as they say here in Boston. Edgerton himself would be proud.

Anonymous said...

lol, well said Kate. Those vids were amazing. No classes earlier than 9?! I'll be in heaven! Yeah, it's midnight:38 here and now, and I'm waking up at 5am tomorrow because I have Saturday duty on the ship. Fun times! =)

FreeLance said...

OMG OMG that was so cool ! i so want to have this camera one day ! it looksso awsome ! imagine filming throwing a rock in a pond that would be great too !