BYU lab gains national attention after slow-motion videos go viral


22 photos
Save Story

Show 3 more videos

Leer en español

Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes

This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.

PROVO — A BYU facility called the Splash Lab has received national attention for their extraordinary videos of sending ordinary actions into slow motion.

Several videos posted on YouTube went viral after showing objects splashing in water in super slow motion, as well as their Christmas edition video showing an ornament shattering.

BYU Professor, Tadd Truscott, has demonstrated to students that science can be fun as well as informative.

"It is just plain cool, isn't it?" Truscott said.

One slow-motion experiment involved skipping rocks on water and then analyzing each individual skip in super slow motion.

"The world record for skipping stones is 51," Truscott said. "My personal best is 12. As the rock comes down into the water, it creates a cavity which it rides on. And the pitch angle creates a lifting force which causes it to rise up again."

In celebration of the Easter season, Truscott and his students combined their slow-motion creativity with eggs. They used high-speed cameras to capture a brief instant of time, and then stretched a second or two of a spinning egg into an eternity.


We figured out a set of mathematical equations that explain what's happening. And I think that's an advance, for sure.

–Tadd Truscott, BYU Professor


"The first time I did this it was on the counter top at my house," Truscott said. "Just had some milk there and spun a hard-boiled egg through it."

The secret of the spinning egg is that milk, sometimes colored with dye, mysteriously climbs up the egg and flings streams of droplets around the kitchen, or the lab.

Truscott said that not only are the videos entertaining, but he and his students have also helped to advance science through analyzing the slow motion.

"We figured out a set of mathematical equations that explain what's happening," Truscott said. "And I think that's an advance, for sure."

BYU student, Ken Langley is doing his entire master's thesis on the spinning egg and its ability to pump milk uphill.

"It could definitely lead to the design of a pump," Langley said. "Every time I look at (the) pictures, it just amazes me."

NPR's "Science Friday" rated one of the BYU Splash Lab's videos as one of the top science videos of the year.

Photos

Related links

Related stories

Most recent Utah stories

Related topics

UtahScience
John Hollenhorst

    STAY IN THE KNOW

    Get informative articles and interesting stories delivered to your inbox weekly. Subscribe to the KSL.com Trending 5.
    By subscribing, you acknowledge and agree to KSL.com's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

    KSL Weather Forecast