Time Fountain

This is a little device inspired by Nate True. The orginal concept was pioneered by Harold E. Edgerton who did lots of neat stuff with strobe photograpy.
You can see more of Nate's stuff at http://cre.ations.net/creator/natetrue

Essentially the Time Fountain is a simple drip fountain that has been dyed with UV reactive dye (sqeezed from a simple highlighter). UV LED's are set to flash in time with the drips so that they appear to be frozen in time. You are actually seeing a new drip with every flash, but you are seeing it in the same place as the last drip and since the drips are very uniform, they appear to be frozen.

 

More projects can be found at http://www.pasqualy.com

 

Images and Video

The drip detection circuit takes the weak wave produced from voltage division across the water and turns it to a nice square wave.

The drip is detected by the change in resistance between the metal tube that water flows through, and the yellow probe wire in the center of the tube. As a drip forms the resistance goes down, once the drip falls the resistance goes up.

This is a somewhat long exposure time photograph of the fountain and the two waveforms on a scope. You can clearly see the square wave over the analog signal.

Youtube video of the Time Fountain.

Keep in mind that no time editing was done to produce these effects.