Materials and Methods

Materials

Methods

For our final setup, we used a wooden door to hang the balloons on. The balloons were supported by nails that had been hammered partway into the door. After much trial and error, we decided that it would be best to pop the balloons from the back, so we drilled holes in the door (about 3 per balloon) that corresponded to nails that we hammered all the way through a thinner piece of wood. When we aligned the nails with the drilled holes, we were able to push the back of the small board such that the nails poked through the drilled holes and popped the balloons. To ensure that the balloons popped with ease, we taped needles to the ends of the nails. We draped a black cloth (with holes cut for the nails) over the door to prevent the background from reflecting the flash. We put foam in each corner of the small board, between it and the door. This kept the board steady as we popped the balloons. We set the door on top of two aquariums to catch the water and clamped it between two tables to keep it steady. We also spread a towel under the aquariums to prevent water splashing on the floor. We set up a flash unit about a meter away from the balloons and used a sound trigger to set off the flash. In order to capture the rings of water suspended in the air, we used a delay box. We used a tripod to position the camera about a meter away from the balloons. We used a Fujifilm Finepix S9100 with the shutter on the bulb setting to capture all images.

Set Up Diagram

front view

back view of the board

side view of the board

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