Bullet impacts at 1,000,000 frames per second

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By Sean Michael Ragan
Posted 2009/10/10 @ 5:01 pm
Category Art & Design, Electronics, Photography & Video, Science

I’m not entirely sure who made this video. I have this strange intuition it might be someone named “Werner Mehl,” and that the video might be copyright 2009, and….somehow, that Werner’s website is probably www.kurzzeit.com. Isn’t it weird how sometimes stuff just comes to you?

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26 Responses to Bullet impacts at 1,000,000 frames per second

Phillip Torrone on October 10th, 2009 at 8:15 pm said:

cool, video!!! – do you know who made it?

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ladyada on October 10th, 2009 at 8:20 pm said:

you are my favoritest blogger ever. except for pt. but even when hes not looking, you’re #1

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Dan Lurie on October 10th, 2009 at 8:28 pm said:

This video is just retardedly awesome.

I’d love to know the background though! Seems like such an impressive imaging setup would cost big bucks, and probably be used for research. Who’s doing this sort of stuff? Firearm/armor manufacturers?

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- japroach on October 10th, 2009 at 9:43 pm said:
  
  Did you miss that huge watermark?
  
  http://www.kurzzeit.com
  
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Anonymous on October 10th, 2009 at 10:04 pm said:

long vid.. be sure to stick around for the buck shot (o:

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Prestron on October 10th, 2009 at 11:14 pm said:

This is what James Bond title sequences should look like.

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Jan on October 11th, 2009 at 2:55 am said:

Cannot resist to be obnoxiously German and flaunt my knowledge around: kurzzeit translates to “short time”. Who’d have guessed.

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ian on October 11th, 2009 at 4:11 am said:

It makes me very sad. I can only think about all killing. All the bullets penetrating people, animals, buildings walls, mothers , children seals, whales, fish, antelope, presidents, royalty, rengades, resistors protestors, innocent bystanders, fathers, uncles brothers, lovers, betrayers, sons daughters, cows sheep pigs, humans, creatures, species life. To make beauty of violence, acts of aggression and to celebrate the instrument of destruction… all sadness.

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- Anonymous on October 11th, 2009 at 7:40 am said:
  
  These are cool videos, educational, and have absolutely nothing to do with killing or violence.
  If the sight of one inanimate metal object striking another inanimate metal object causes that much emotional distress, you might need psychological help. Or, since this is a site for makers, use that emotion to make something to improve the world. Invent better body armor for all those innocents.
  
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- Simon on October 11th, 2009 at 9:30 am said:
  
  Mute button – don’t fail me now!
  
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  Sean Michael Ragan on October 11th, 2009 at 9:39 am said:
  
  Zas iz Kraftwerk, ja?
  
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- SuperJdynamite on October 11th, 2009 at 11:04 am said:
  
  “I can only think about all killing.”
  
  It sounds like the problem may lie with the viewer as opposed to the content. If all you can think about is killing then perhaps you should talk to somebody about it. Be well, amigo.
  
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Ben on October 11th, 2009 at 6:55 am said:

sweet video. i just wish we knew who made it and when…

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ehrichweiss on October 11th, 2009 at 10:21 am said:

those are nice, especially to show what happens when a not-so-reinforced projectile, like an airplane, hits a heavily reinforced object, like the Pentagon, and leaves a hole smaller than the projectile in the process(or in the case of some of those clips, no hole at all).

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- Blubrick on October 11th, 2009 at 4:49 pm said:
  
  I really don’t think you can draw any reasonable parallels between a few grams of lead travelling at thousands of metres per second and a few tonnes of steel and aluminium travelling at hundreds of kilometres per hour. I’m insufficiently trained in physics to know all the mathematics and I can’t even guess at the numbers involved, but simple observation suggests to me that the forces are enormously disproportionate. Take a look at the video at around 2:04. They show a collision with what looks like a droplet of milk which subsequently deforms the bullet. If the forces were even remotely similar, planes would not be able to fly in the rain, or even into clouds.
  
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  Guy on October 11th, 2009 at 8:48 pm said:
  
  Bullet = Solid.
  
  Airplane = Frame.
  
  Which would be more susceptible to deformation or collapse?
  
  Come on. You know the answer.
  
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  Zach on October 11th, 2009 at 10:50 pm said:
  
  It’s probably a BB pellet, though it splashes like that famous sequence of a drop of milk splashing into a pool of milk. What gets me is the kind of setup it would take to hit a flying bullet with another projectile. The Mythbusters come to mind, as they’ve done a number of timing-dependent things, but I’m not sure they’ve tried *that* yet.
  
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SuperJdynamite on October 11th, 2009 at 10:59 am said:

Sadly the effect of 1,000,000 FPS is somewhat lost on me given that the downsampling to flash leaves you somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 FPS and then it’s packetized over TCP/IP and streamed to this crappy browser I’m using.

Still kind of neat, though.

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- Sean Michael Ragan on October 12th, 2009 at 7:49 am said:
  
  You’re confusing filming rate and playback rate. This video was *filmed* at one megaframe per second, but if you were to actually *watch* it at that speed it would not appear slowed at all. In other words you’d go to a hell of a lot of work to capture 1,000,000 frames per second and then watch it at exactly the same speed it happens in real life. You *want* to watch it at a drastically lower frame rate than it was filmed so it will, you know, appear to be slowed down.
  
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Johannes on October 11th, 2009 at 1:41 pm said:

This video is amazingly beautifull. The way the bullets ‘explode’ on the massive target reminds me to sunflowers. This video really took me away
Brilliant. Johannes

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Jatt on October 12th, 2009 at 11:05 am said:

The music, the slow motion, the spray…BALLISTICS PORN!!!

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mucker on November 2nd, 2009 at 4:04 am said:

that is playing? VERY cool!!

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- Anonymous on December 8th, 2009 at 8:18 am said:
  
  Here is the song. You can find it on itunes. Artist:J-Punch Song:Temple (Tribal Mix) Album: Bang It Forward
  
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Nikita Teplitskiy on November 21st, 2011 at 3:10 pm said:

Hold on, that’s my car!

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Nikita Teplitskiy on November 21st, 2011 at 3:12 pm said:

Hold on, that is my sheet metal!

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electriceye on March 26th, 2013 at 10:34 am said:

How and why do they film such things? Why, In a ballistics chamber with lots of protection and extremely expensive cameras- also very well protected. We did not make this video but have many more impressive, but alas, also unable to disclose to the public. You can find some of the best hi-speed research cameras at http://www.visionresearch.com/Products/High-Speed-Cameras/ and the rest is all setup, arrangement of your target areas. Why do we do it? Testing composites, armor plate, shields and even blast screens. For the anti-gun or projectile weapon naysayers, if you can only think of death and hurt, then you may need some counseling. It’s our researchers job to to try and prevent hurt and death- not an easy task.

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