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Video31 Oct 2018ScienceLight & strobes

Smarter Every Day makes shockwaves visible with schlieren imaging

Destin Sandlin films a bullet's pressure waves with a mirror-based optical set-up, a different way of seeing sound.

Watch on YouTube ↗SmarterEveryDay · Destin Sandlin · 10 min

Smarter Every Day is Destin Sandlin's engineering channel. In this 2018 episode he uses schlieren imaging, an optical technique that reveals changes in air density, to film the shockwaves around a supersonic bullet in ultra slow motion. The description links to Veritasium's own schlieren video and to background reading on Mach angles.

This is not cymatics in the plate-and-sand sense, and Sandlin does not call it that. It belongs here because it is the other route to visible sound: instead of making a surface respond to a wave, you make the wave itself visible in the air. Schlieren rigs are within reach of a determined hobbyist, needing a point light source, a parabolic mirror and a camera.

The firearms content will not be to everyone's taste. The optics are the reason to watch.

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