Now For Something Completely Different

[Joefnh]

Well here is something completely different. Over the past couple of years I have been working on various projects at MIT including one with some special cameras. Why 'special', well this camera system can take pictures at 1 trillion pictures in one second. As a point of comparison a video camera usually takes picturs at 30 pictures per second and those high speed cameras on mythbusters take pictures at about 1000 pictures per second, here we take pictures at 100000000000 frames per second

Why is this unique? Well with this speed of camera we can for the first time ever make a movie of the speed of light, which is the fastest thing in the universe. what I mean is we can actually see light move. All of assume light is instant and from our perspective it is, but light actually travels at 186,000 miles per second. Or as a point of note, a beam of light can circle the earth about 7 times in one second.

In this experiment we sent out a very short pulse of light from a laser aimed at a plastic coke bottle filled with water and then made a movie showing light as it moves through this object. In the other movie we show light as it moves over the surface of the apple and then the backboard behind it.

In this first test a pulse of light only about the length of the thickness of a matchbook cover was sent out to the bottle and then recorded on this camera system

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fSqFWcb4rE&sns=em

Here the same type of pulse of light is sent out and you can watch it hit the apple and then the backboard just like a wave in the ocean.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RbLLYCiyGE&sns=em

I just thought I would share this as this is a first and for us New Englanders, we are the first in the world to have this unique capability. I guess this is what it's like to have fun at work...no wonder it does not feel like work most days.

[carolm]

Wow, thanks Joe. I'm eager to share this with a couple of friends of mine-- one is an exceptionally talented high school physics teacher and her husband who teaches astrophysics at a local college and is a NASA ambassador. Great people-- real science nerds (their words, not mine). They will love this. I enjoyed watching it.

thanks
Carol

[TXBrenda]

Thanks for sharing these videos. I am a science nerd myself - with math and mechanical engineering degrees. About thirty years ago I worked with people using streak cameras that would take images in nanoseconds. I understand that technology is obsolete now & I'm not sure what equipment they are using now.

[Joefnh]

I'm glad you liked it Carol and I hope your friends enjoy it as well.

Brenda I'm an engineer turned physicist at MIT and really enjoy working there. This system my group worked on the phased RAS CCD imager system. It is actually a series of interleaved imagers with dedicated ROICs that are used to make this video, overall we achieved a frame rate of 1.24 femtoseconds per frame.

[Bifcus16]

Joe,

This is very nerdy cool. Sent it some friends.....

[MBombardier]

Thanks, Joe! I sent them to a few people including my son, who has a degree in engineering physics.

Very cool...

[Polly]

Loved it! Thanks for sharing.

Polly, another science nerd

[MaggieRedwings]

Hi Joe.

Absolutely great. Sent it to one of our tenant's sons who just graduated Penn State with 3 major degrees and a minor in technology. One of the majors was physics. MIT really tried recruiting him but he settled on Berkley since they have an ultimate frisbee team. He plays on championship teams and also the Philly ultimate professional team. He loves being a physics nerd.

Love, Maggie

[tnelson]

This is so cool! I will send it to a bunch of family and friends. Wow.

--T