Aatish Bhatia noticed a plant in his backyard whose leaves naturally repelled water. He took a sample to a friend who had access to a high-speed camera and an electron microscope to investigate what made the leaves so hydrophobic.
But how does a leaf become superhydrophobic? The trick to this, Janine explained, is that the water isn’t really sitting on the surface. A superhydrophobic surface is a little like a bed of nails. The nails touch the water, but there are gaps in between them. So there’s fewer points of contact, which means the surface can’t tug on the water as much, and so the drop stays round.
The leaf is so water repellant that drops of water bounce right off of it:
No one uses slow motion more consistently than Wes Anderson; all his films except Fantastic Mr. Fox use the technique. Here are all the slow-mo scenes from his films strung together:
Vimeo user Subterminally appears to have had the worst 13 seconds of his life last week when he hit the cliff off of which he was base jumping. Subterminallyill received a “Compression Fracture of the T12 Vertebra, 5 stitches to the eye, 6 stitches to the chin, severely sprained Back, wrist and hand. multiple bruised areas,” which is not too bad considering he FELL OFF A FUCKING CLIFF.
Alternate copy for this post, “No. No, no no no no no no. No. No. No. No, no, no, no, no. No.”
This video seems like it was made specifically for kottke.org. In the first half of it, you learn how cranberries are harvested. In the second half, there’s gorgeous HD slo-mo footage of wakeskating through a cranberry bog.
And with a Tycho soundtrack no less…it’s all too perfect. (via ★interesting)
Here’s slow motion video from Smarter Every Day of what it looks like when an AK47 is shot underwater. Not only is the slow motion footage beautiful (best shots at 2:40, 4:30, 7:20), the science behind why the bubbles do what they do is explained. Science! Previously.
A Danish TV show called Dumt & Farligt (which translates as Stupid & Dangerous) films all sorts of crazy things at 2500 frames/sec with a super HD camera. You may have seen the first video from last April…here’s a follow-up that just came out:
The highlights for me were the bottle of red wine in the microwave and the rocket-powered drying rack from the first video and the bottle of Diet Coke shot with a bullet and gas leak in a camper. The Diet Coke scene is almost cinematic, the way the bottle’s clothes are blown off and “arms” flap around as the bottle spins, wobbles, and finally falls to the ground. (via digg)
Remember the guy who rode the alleged 100-foot wave? Here’s a video of some other tow-in surfers from that same location (Nazare, Portugal) on the same day. The waves aren’t quite as big as 100 feet, but the sequence starting at 1:52, where the guy falls off his board and swims like hell to get out of the way before the whole ocean crashes down on top of him (watch the top of the wave), gives you a real sense of how insane this sport is.
Great use of high definition and slow motion. (via @alexismadrigal)
This doesn’t look so impressive in slow motion but when it switches to super slow motion around 2:00, watching the gasoline attempt to outrun the flames is really cool.
In this series of slow motion clips, you can see that if you hold a Slinky by one end and drop it, the bottom end doesn’t actually move until the top end catches up with it.
I’ve watched this like six times and it drops my jaw every time…the bottom of the Slinky JUST. DOES. NOT. MOVE. Here’s the scientific explanation:
The explanation that “it takes time for the bottom of the slinky to feel the change” might work ok, but it isn’t the best.
Then why doesn’t the bottom of the slinky fall as the top is let go? I think the best thing is to think of the slinky as a system. When it is let get, the center of mass certainly accelerates downward (like any falling object). However, at the same time, the slinky (spring) is compressing to its relaxed length. This means that top and bottom are accelerating towards the center of mass of the slinky at the same time the center of mass is accelerating downward.
I was trying to find out exactly what is happening in this video when I stumbled on the below video, and then it was off to the races. 30 minutes later, if they ever want to make a Shame-like movie about heavy tool machine porn, I’m available and sufficiently prepped. My brain about melted when I realized the drill wasn’t spinning.
The other video is 6 minutes of a blade cutting through steel with a soundtrack by the London Philharmonic, and it’s quite meditative to watch. (via @chrissandoval)
Here’s another slow motion drill with sparkles. Cripes. It might be better.
Lovely video of skateboarding tricks in super slow motion. It was filmed at 1000fps.
Uncommon skateboarding tricks in super slow motion. Filmed at 1,000 frames per second with a Redlake N3 high speed camera. Since skateboarding trick names are defined by common usage and these tricks are not very common, some of them don’t have well-established names. So here are my best guesses as to what they should be called:
Kyle McPherson — nollie dolphin flip (AKA nollie forward flip)
Cameron Carmichael — backside 180 casper flip (?) (or bs 180 hospital flip)
Jerrod Skorupski — nollie heelflip bs body varial
David Case - nollie 360 shuv underflip (AKA nerd flip)
David Case - frontside shuv underflip (AKA kiwi flip)
Dustin Blauvelt - hardflip pretzel
Dustin Blauvelt - Merlin twist (switch front foot impossible fs 180)
Dustin Blauvelt - nollie heelflip indy grab
Shane Anderson - early grab frontside 180 fingerflip (?)
Jovan Pierson - pressure hardflip (?)
Jovan Pierson - ?? I don’t know what this is, I just call it a Jovan flip
Erick Schaefer - backside pop shuv underflip
Tim Hamp - Nollie pressure hardflip (?)
Many of you liked the slinky on the treadmill video. This slow-motion video of Alan Rickman drinking tea isn’t quite as compelling, but it’s not bad either. Wait for the drop around 1:22 before judging.
Stay Connected