This page created 04-30-2001

A while back, I experimented with taking photos of things smashing into other things like Dr Harold Edgerton did when he was at MIT. Edgerton info

I took a regular camera strobe, and modified it so it would produce short flashes, built a sound-triggered switch, and started swinging a hammer at light bulbs.

I'll scan some of those photos and put them up here sometime.

BUT, I wanted a shorter flash than my strobe would give be, so I waited......
Until last Friday when I was showing my junk piles to Bryan, and I rediscovered some EG&G strobe tube/trigger units on a shelf. So we got them flashing, and I was off again.

I decided to measure the light output, and (After substituting a few different capacitors)
I got to a 1 microsecond (Plus a bit of trailing tail) flash. That's fast enough to take pictures of bullets. (Oh no, shooting guns in the dark!!!)

Here is the beginning of a page describing the experiments. I'll update it as things progress.

I know about the missing image.

More NEWS

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Strobe capacitors

What does a 0.1 microFarad 600 Volt DC cap look like?

And where do they come from?

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Strobe tube

A nice EG&G strobe tube

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Scope pictures

A 1.0 uF cap with the strobe right up against the detector 20.0 microSeconds/Division About a 120 uSecond 1/3 height pulse.

A 0.1 uF cap with the strobe moved away from the detector 0.2 microSeconds/Division About a 1.4 uSecond 1/3 height pulse.

A 0.1 uF cap with the strobe moved away from the detector 0.5 microSeconds/Division About a 1.4 uSecond 1/3 height pulse.