Chris Higgins
Strobe Lights & Water Drops
by Chris Higgins - October 5, 2009 - 2:46 PM

Today’s trippy science videos: strobe lights affecting water drops. By shining a strobe light (a light that’s turned on and off very, very rapidly) on a stream of water, strange effects occur. First, a display at an MIT museum showing water droplets under a green strobe light:

And now the really cool thing, Nate True’s Time Fountain, an art installation that appears to freeze drops in mid-air due to the strobe effect, and even reverse them, making them appear to rise, among other things.

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Comments (5)

  1. my brother and I used to turn on the strobe light and wrestle. We never knew who was going to do what, it was hard to see anything…. probably not the brightest idea we had, but it sure was fun

    posted by Jeremiah on 10-5-2009 at 6:52 pm

  2. Incredible, how do the drops show up, is there fluorescent dye added?

    posted by Sheila on 10-5-2009 at 7:41 pm

  3. When we were little we loved dancing with the strobe light on, and shaking our hair around and watching it. It was fun to flip through a book or throw a stack of cards in the air and watch them fall. I also liked to walk towards the couch slowly and before I knew it I’d trip and fall onto it. Heh.

    posted by Rachel on 10-5-2009 at 8:13 pm

  4. You failed to mention Doc Edgerton, the MIT prof who popularized strobe photography and had a display like this in the hallway, “Strobe Alley,” where you could vary the speed as above.

    http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/edgerton.html
    http://techtv.mit.edu/collections/docedgertonvideo
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Eugene_Edgerton

    posted by TJ on 10-6-2009 at 12:16 am

  5. Yeah TJ. The Edgerton museum here in Nebraska has quite a few similar displays that show the strobe effect on water. Also, lots of good info on Edgerton himself.

    posted by Justin on 10-6-2009 at 8:53 am

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