Summary

   The goal of this project was to take high quality photographs of a pellet bursting a water balloon and to see what happens when the pellet strikes the balloon.  As the pellet struck the balloon, the water should have erupted from where the pellet hit, and rips formed down and across balloon while the pellet continued stretching the balloon vertically.

    The water balloon was tied to a piece of string connected to the gun rack, making the balloon hang below the barrel of the gun.  The flash was also attached to the gun rack and connected to a sound trigger with a digital time delay. I found that the best delays for the height of the balloon were between 0.007 seconds and 0.009 seconds.

    My pictures clearly illustrate what happens when the pellet bursts the balloon and came out great.  In a few of them you can even see the pellet stretching the balloon as it goes through it.

    My setup was fairly simple, and the only trouble I had was hanging the balloon from the same height each time and using the correct time delay.  Using the digital time delay made it very simple to regulate the time delay and consistently change it. In the future I would like to use multiple flashes with colored lens to show the different stages of the eruption of the balloon, which would help to understand what is happening in the picture with the "fog" (see gallery).

   Even though I wasn't able to do my original project with Brandon, I feel that my project came out great and I got some really nice pictures.