Conclusions

The purpose of the project was to see what happens when a squishy ball flattens in milk. As the ball flattened it should have pushed the milk out then pulled itself back together as it bounced back up. If the ball comes back together faster than the milk can fill in where the ball used to be, there should be a point when there is no milk under the ball.

The ball was dropped into a cookie sheet with a thin layer of milk on top of it. I found it best to use whole milk because it gave the most uniform splashes late in the splash sequence. The trigger I used was connected to an electronic time delay. This allowed me to capture the ball during all stages of its compression. Sometimes the ball would make the sound trigger go off twice when it bounced on the cookie sheet. To fix this I put the microphone on a stack of paper towels to decrease its sensitivity.

After taking all the pictures it is clear to see that the ball pulls itself together faster than the milk can reform back around it. In most cases the ball pulled some milk with it. This is evident by looking at how the milk sticks to the underside of the ball when it is bouncing back up.

Taking pictures was relatively simple; the only thing that had to change from shot to shot was the time delay. This was adjusted by turning a variable resistor slightly after every shot. In future experiments I hope to use a digital time delay that will tell me what delay is being used and allow me to more evenly space out the delays.

Despite losing my partner after the first photo shoot, the project went over smoothly. Time was became an issue but everything got done completely and with a high degree of scrutiny.

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High Speed Imaging at the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics