These Broken Flowers Won't Break Your Heart

You probably already know that most things shatter when they are frozen in liquid nitrogen and then hit against a solid surface, but knowing something to be true and seeing it happen are two different things—especially when the subjects in question are beautiful flowers.

Photographer Jon Shireman's Broken Flower series consists entirely of images of flowers before and after they are shattered with the help of liquid nitrogen. While the idea is simple (in fact, many high school science teachers do the same thing in class), the resulting images are absolutely stunning. You can see more of them over at io9.