Oh, hi!
Dan, have you ever wanted to see your name in lights, big lights?
Well, who hasn't, really?
Yeah.
Sadly, couldn't find any light bulbs but did find a load of det cord.
( theme music playing )
I love that we have that in the shed and not lights.
And you used to use det cord in the Army, didn't you?
- Yeah.
- What's it all about?
Well, basically, it's called a detonating cord. It detonates, right?
About 6,000 meters a second. Which is super quick.
- God!
- So in the blink of an eye, it's gone.
It's like off into the horizon in one second.
- Pretty much.
- Yeah.
But, luckily, we've got Slow Mo cameras so we can slow it down.
So we're gonna try and write our names in det cord and see if we can see it propagate throughout the whole thing and spell our names out.
Brought out the big guns today.
We've got the V2511.
We'll start off at 28,000 frames a second.
Because I get the feeling 1,000 just won't cut it.
Okay, so I'm gonna talk to you about the det cord in case you don't know what it is.
Essentially, you see this stuff here looks like an electrical cable?
It's actually just like a sheath with plastic explosives in the center, which is what detonates.
It's not very sensitive.
So you can, you know, tear it, rip it, bend it, crush it, stamp on it, set fire to it and it won't explode. It won't detonate.
Which is why you need a detonator.
And that's gonna be electrically initiated with these cables.
Which then causes the det cord to detonate down.
So that's how it works, basically.
All right, how loud is this gonna be?
Super loud.
What?
- Exactly.
- Yeah.
Three, two, one!
- Oh!
- Oh!
Did you feel that shockwave there?
I heard it rolling over the hills.
It lifted all of the loose dirt around there.
It's completely disappeared.
That's mental.
And it happens in a blink of an eye, doesn't it?
Like you can't just like differentiate.
I didn't even see it. I had my eyes closed.
- Oh, did you?
- Yeah.
I went like this.
All right, let's go see what that looked like.
All right.
- Woo-hoo.
I like that font.
Gav: Oh, that might be the coolest my name has ever looked.
Dan: Look at the detonation wave.
It's making it all look like it's all heat waves going across the dust.
- Do you see that?
- It's sort of hard to tell but I think because the shockwaves are coming out of each letter, it's blasting the explosion one way.
Then it gets hit by another one.
So the explosion is sort of going like vuu-vuu-vuu the letters.
Dan: The dust. Look at the V, the top of the V.
It explodes, then implodes, then explodes and implodes again.
Gav: It's the combination of the air pressure swinging all the gas around.
But also as the shockwaves go through the air, that's also warping it.
So it looks really dreamy.
It's very much like water.
Dan: It is.
Gav: If you disturb the surface of water, you get the same exact... obviously, much, much slower.
It makes it look like it's underwater.
That could be on the seabed. You could trick someone.
That was fun, right?
Well, of course, it was fun.
So your letters were skinny letters because you're skinny.
- Right.
- Yeah.
I'm thinking fat letters because I'm fat.
So you're gonna bold your font.
Yeah. It's gonna be much bigger.
So the one we used was a 48 grain det cord.
For me, we're going 100 grain.
So it means that basically the letters are just gonna be fatter.
Is that physical thicker cord?
Or is it just densely, well...
Uh, I think it's actually physically like thicker.
Just got more plastic explosives in it.
Well, that's what you've been up to.
I have changed the frame rate on the V2511 from 28,000 frames a second to 90.
Oh, you've gone fatter than that as well.
Fatter frame rate, fatter letters, twice as loud?
I don't know about twice as loud.
But it's gonna be louder.
- All right.
- You're gonna feel it more as well.
- All right.
- Right.
Three, two, one!
It's just like... ( imitates explosion )
Yeah, yeah.
Did you hear that all the way over the back of the hills there for ages?
- That was mental.
- Yeah.
- Cool, isn't it?
- That's really cool.
Isn't blowing stuff up fun?
- It is.
- Isn't it fun?
I can see why you joined the Army.
I love it.
This was shot much faster so it's moving a lot slower through frame.
Oh, isn't that cool?
It actually looks very furry.
Looks like it's quite gonna be soft if you stroked it.
I wouldn't want to touch it.
No. Absolutely not.
That's the water ripple there.
That's just air molecules there all smashed up
- like, what is happening?
- Yeah.
Det cord's pretty fast, isn't it?
- Rapid!
- Really quick.
Rapid!
Love a good shockwave.
Especially at 28,000 frames a second.
Hopefully, you also loved the shockwave.
And we'll see you right back here for the next post of the "Slow Motion Stories"