What does a Gong Sound Like when Hit with a 1189mph Baseball? - Smarter Every Day 267

[Music] Hey! It's me, Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day. We are right in the middle of a huge experiment. It's kind of like you walked in halfway through class. It's cool, though. There's a couple of videos you can watch and get caught up later. But basically, we built a giant air cannon that'll shoot a baseball faster than the speed of sound. This thing was a massive undertaking that's honestly really kind of like the accumulation of my childhood love of baseball, my study of aerodynamics, and my work as a developmental weapons tester.

This cannon allows me to continue learning in a hands-on way about how things move at supersonic velocities, which is not an easy thing to come by. This cannon was a beast to design and build, and the patrons of Smarter Every Day paid for it, for which I am very grateful. Now I'm at that critical point where I want to start characterizing the cannon and how it works, meaning I'm learning how to dial it in so I can make a ball go exactly how fast I want it to go. The ability to precisely control the velocity and timing of a baseball will let me do all kinds of other experiments.

So, it's tempting to look at this as some kind of big YouTube stunt, but that is not what it is. So today, we're continuing our mission to graph the relationship between how the amount of air we jam into the cannon correlates with how fast the ball goes when that air pressure is released. We fill it up to a certain air pressure, we pull the trigger... two, one! Then we use high-speed cameras and math to figure out how fast the ball exits the barrel, and then we graph our data.

We have our first data point. Also, we can measure how fast the ball decelerates, so we can calculate drag on the baseball at different velocities. These four high-speed cameras give us amazing slow-motion footage and allow us to quantify times, distances, and velocities so we can understand what's going on. This is the largest setup I've ever done on Smarter Every Day, so Trent's gonna be helping run the four high-speed cameras, and George is gonna help document the entire process.

We only need like the first 30 feet of baseball flight for scientific purposes, which means we don't really care what happens to the baseball after that. So we asked the patrons of Smarter Every Day for suggestions of interesting things we could hit with a supersonic baseball. In the earlier video, which is really part one of this video, we shot a container of rainbow sprinkles and a jar of extra heavy mayonnaise, which was surprisingly gross.

Let's go get smarter every day and learn more about the supersonic baseball cannon! We've got some mirrors; I know that seems kind of silly, but I think this is going to be one of the coolest shots. We're going to look down the barrel as it's firing. This is what I'm most excited about! Check that out! We're going to shoot—that's so loud!

We're going to shoot a gong today. Raythex has been a patron for a year. He suggests—or she suggests—five pounds of silly putty, and then they gave us an Amazon link to get this. So we bought five of them. The thought of shooting silly putty is that it’s a non-Newtonian fluid, and it should act like a solid if it is hit rapidly. So it's potentially possible for us to shatter this like glass.

So, like, I can push my finger into it. Yeah, but then if I punch it, it doesn't make a dent. Oh, does it hurt? Yes, actually it does. Okay, so that—but a baseball? I wonder what it does. I have no idea. Let's throw it in here and get it cold.

So the challenge with silly putty is that, as a non-Newtonian fluid, it flows under the force of gravity, and by the time we pressurize the cannon, it would droop down off the bottle we were using to hold it. And because it's not safe to be downrange with pressure on the cannon, we had to improvise an odd little contraption to corral the putty.

390. All right, we're about at 400. Everybody ready? Yep! George, you ready? Yeah, I'm gonna give you a countdown. Okay? 400 psi versus silly putty before the shadows get here. Okay, ready? Yep! And three, two, one—one, two, one! [Music]

Tape survived! There's a piece of the board. Ooh! All right! Oh, the fracture—it looks like metal breaks during a tension break. Like, cavities were created in it. Yeah, look at that! Tension breaks, you can see the porosity determined where it broke. Oh man, that just looks like a fracture edge is what that looks like.

I've got this professor, Dr. Hazeli, and I took a fracture mechanics class with him, and he always carried some silly putty with him. If you pull it very fast, it breaks. Oh, okay. And if I do the same thing with a slower rate? So there's like a gum—so there'll be quasi-static there exactly.

All right, let's see whether it behaves more like a liquid or a solid in the slow-mo. [Music] [Music] Oh, you can see it move! Did you see it move? You could see the baseball move to the side! You could actually see it redirect! So it diverted it enough where it didn't hit the backstop. So that took more energy out of the baseball than anything else because it didn't hit the backstop, and it only made it to the trees.

What an interesting setup. It looks like tuna—a fencepost. Like, what is that? That assemblage of objects is ridiculous. Looks Alabama, doesn't it? It looks like a person! You see their head instead of like sweet home welfare? Sweet home Alabama? Governor Kay... I ever just put that? That looks like Governor Kay Ivey. I like KIV. She's pretty good.

So we just got Mach 1.3 with no vacuum. Really? Yes! Mach 1.3! No vacuum seems kind of easy. [Laughter] So this is our data as of the end of today's test. We ran out of sunlight for the day, and when we came out the next morning, there was a beautiful spider web, and I still can't figure out how the water drops don't slide down on the vertical strands—it's amazing!

Anyway, we had another container of sprinkles, which was suggested by patron Andrew Maxie from before. In our first video, we saw what happened to the sprinkles on the impact side, but we were really curious to see what happens on the exit side. We set up our slow-mo camera so that we could see that angle, and my son was off for the day, so he came and ran the checklist for us.

Move fire switch to release to drop s-e-a-r, seer. The fire switch is in release; the seer has dropped. That's going up quicker. Okay, we're going to 600, so take it to like 605. Okay? Yes, sir! Create a trigger. Ready? George, are you ready? Okay, here we go. Supersonic baseball versus sprinkles—600 psi. Have a minus 10 psi vacuum in five, four, three, two, one—two, one, two, one, two, one!

All right, so let's look at what it did with the sprinkles first. [Music] Isn't this beautiful? Okay, so there's so much to talk about here. Let me back it up way back here to right before impact, and what I'd like you to do is pick a sprinkle.

I don't know how to put it any other way, but I need you to fully commit to that sprinkle. Complete focus here. No other sprinkles exist except your sprinkle. You got one? What I'm going to do now is I'm going to play it forward slowly, and I want you to follow your sprinkle. I think this is so cool! I don't fully understand the mechanics of this, but pretty much every single sprinkle eventually rips apart.

Did your sprinkle explode? Yeah, mine did too! It's so rad! I've watched so many of these sprinkles explode. Okay, so anyway, another thing I want to point out—let me back it back up again to get the colors right on this. We ran this footage through a denoising algorithm, and I'm going to cut that off now. You see all the fuzziness? That's sensor noise!

When I play it again, watch what appears to be a shockwave propagating out from the impact point. This only shows up on noisy footage. Here we go! [Music] Oh, right! Isn't it amazing? Okay, so I'm not really sure what that is. I think it's the shockwave flattening out when it hits the front of the bottle, but I don't really know.

So let's back it up, and I'll play it one more time. If it's a line, it's gonna be right there. Mach 1.5 would make sense if we get that, and our number is 1189 miles per hour. Did you get it? Did we get Mach 1.5? We got 1.54! Heck yeah! Yeah! So, we can actually predict with pressure and our graph.

Oh dude, it's like it lines, it's linear. Do we want to go straight to the gong or do we do mirror first? Mary's going to make a mess; here's going to be a mess. You're going to take a long time to set up. You want to go straight to the gong? Let's do it! Oh my gosh, and now it's time for the gong.

This was suggested by Smarter Everyday patron Andrew and sourced by Smarter Everyday patron Bryson. Bryson's been supporting for four years—thank you very much! Let's do it! [Music] I am very excited about this! This is gonna be awesome! If you have a little crease in there, then your vacuum will leak out. All right, so that's a good seal right there—no creases!

Have we ever done a 700 psi shot? Am I yelling at you? Yeah, every time! So we're taking the shot very seriously. We've got a big shield and a bunch of bottles in between us and both the tank and the gong because we don't know what's gonna happen. Just get here for now, and then when we go to actually fire, we're going to move forward with Destin because we don't want to get a ricochet.

So right now we're pressurizing the tank, so if the tank pops, we're behind steel. Then when it fires, what's the thing that's going to... where we're going to hit from if we get hit? Yeah, so we want to make sure we can't see that. No part of your body can see that!

It's gonna be a flying guillotine! Yes, it'll just take off a finger or whatever! His arm—that old movie where the guy takes off his hat and it's got razor blades in it and chucks it... yes! You seen that? That's James Bond, right? That's James Bond! Is it James Bond? I think so. I think so.

When I was a kid, I seriously overestimated the lethality of throwing stars—you just relied on it in a lethal situation. Well, I mean, deep thought, Destin! I mean, like G.I. Joe people could die because that... that sounded like a gun!

Oh, we lost our... we lost our vacuum! Oh, okay! That's what that was! So we lost our vacuum, the tape popped. So the tape ripped. Damn, it scared me so bad! Wow, that was a thump! Yeah, it was! So we're going 700 with no tape—that's what we're doing now!

God, that scared me! Did that scare you? Yeah, we were talking about like throwing stars and guillotines. Should we go to 800 since we're going? Yes, 800 would be more useful than 700! Yes! Okay, we're going to 800 psi! I feel like we've been pressurizing this as long as I've been alive! We are now at the highest pressure this cannon has ever seen! 800!

You ready? I'm ready! Five, four, three, two, one—fire! Two, one—fire! Two, one—fire! Oh my god, where'd the gong go? All right! Oh, went right through! Wow! Oh man! [Applause] Doesn't sound as good, does it? Good aim again, buddy! Oh my gosh, you crushed it!

[Music] [Music] [Music] Okay, that was awesome! Did you see the balls? That is amazing! Go back to the bulge that it did. Oh my gosh! It looks like water! Oh, see that right there? That's a thumbnail! That's where it starts ripping! You see it go take a walk?

Just enough YouTube for you today, young man! What time is it? Dude, time! 1.45 Mach! 1.45! All right, so this is our data right now. I questioned this data point a little bit because we had a vacuum set up on it and we ruptured, so there we are. I don't know, looks like it might be a little bit of a curve, but we'll see.

Remember the mirror from the beginning? This awesome target suggestion was provided by Smarter Everyday patron Patrick Flanagan. I've done mirror shots like this before, and the setup actually proves to be quite the technical challenge.

Let me explain using a view from a camera that George set up on a stick behind the target. What we want to do is see a reflection of the baseball over here to the side, which means we can set the camera up to the side and we can see right down the flight axis. The interesting thing about this setup is we have the sun just off the screen up here to the top right, which means that sun is also going to hit the mirror, which sends light back up towards the baseball.

In fact, you can see the reflection of the sunlight on the ground there as the baseball gets closer and closer to the mirror. It gets closer and closer to that sunlight that's bouncing off of the mirror back up towards the flight line. As the ball exits the baseball cannon, it's in shadow, but when it gets all the way down here to that sunlight, it's going to be illuminated by the reflection of the sun's rays.

More light is good for the high-speed camera, so we want that! So in order to enhance that, we put another mirror off here to the side, hoping to bounce more of the sun's light back up to the baseball. Because of the way we set this up, we expect the baseball to fly through sunlight twice, and the rest of the time it's going to be flying in the shadow.

Now that we understand that, the next thing to figure out is where exactly along the flight line should we focus the camera. We've got the cannon shooting to this mirror bouncing back here to this camera lens, so the question is where is it going to be in focus?

So in order to do this, we've got my son sitting there, and we're focusing on him, but we're going to impact right here. So if we're focused there, we're not going to see the ball when it hits the mirror. If we're focused on exit, we're not going to see the ball when it hits the mirror or there, so we have to choose!

So my gut says we focus from here to here, so we kind of like part our focus right here. There will be no motion blur! There'll be zero motion blur! We're gonna be in line with it, yeah, so we can expose as much as we want! We set the camera to 15,000 frames per second, and after one last optical alignment, we were ready for the shot.

Five, four, three, two, one—five, two, one—five! We triggered on everything! All right, starting the data! Wow, George, dude! Holy moly! Dude, that is wild! That's when the math works right there! [Music] [Music]

Oh! [Music] Wow, you see the—goodness gracious! Good job, dude! That's great! I'm sorry, I'm just excited! Good job aiming, son! Yeah, for real, hey! Really good job!

[Music] What's interesting is the stuff in the background's still in focus! [Music] This whole piece is just moving! Oh, look at the other mirror! It's still there! That's the wind got to it and blew it away! No, the wind from the cannon!

Yeah, we'll see, it went through! There it is! Oh, it's moving that way! Oh, you can see it change directions! Which is what everybody's saying, but I just felt like I needed to say it louder for some reason! That was a really good day!

Thank you for watching Smarter Every Day! We are going to do more—oh, data time! Data time! Data time! We got to put our data on the graph! Here's 3610. You ready? Thank you for watching Smarter Every Day! We're going to get more data to fill in our supersonic baseball cannon! That's pretty characterization! Characterization!

So please consider subscribing. We are super excited! Thank you to all of the patrons that suggested the different things to shoot! Sprinkles was Andrew Maxie! We had, uh—what is going on? What is this? I'm sorry, what?

[Music] I'm sorry, is the mirror rippling like liquid? What is that? Okay, that's amazing! All right, so what I haven't told you is that the reason we're getting this data is because we're gonna do something crazy.

We're gonna do something super, super crazy with the supersonic baseball cannon. It's gonna be hard. It's—yeah, we're gonna try to do something crazy! I think we'll do it, but we're going to try. I think it's possible, and we need this data! If it happens, it'll be the craziest shower thought I've ever had!

So yeah, I hope it works! Please consider subscribing to Smarter Every Day! We are grateful! Thanks! Oh god, that does not sound right! You know what's fun? Shooting a supersonic baseball cannon at stuff and getting really cool data!

You know what's also fun? Making your own cannon! This episode of Smarter Every Day is sponsored by KiwiCo! KiwiCo is a really cool subscription service where you get kits sent to your house so a child you love can explore and learn all kinds of different STEAM concepts. KiwiCo offers nine different subscription lines, each catering to different age groups to teach about science, technology, engineering, arts, and math.

These things make fantastic gifts! Everything you need to create an awesome project comes in the kit, so you don't have to worry about running to the store and getting more supplies! It's been awesome to see my son mature as he's grown up with the kits! At this point, he's empowered! He can do the whole project on his own!

In fact, he's now learning communication skills, and he's helping his sister do hers. KiwiCo now ships to more than 40 countries! So if you want to check this out, go to kiwico.com/smarter, and I'll let the CEO of KiwiCo, Sandra, tell you what you get with that offer.

Do you know what the promo is? Yeah, you get a free crate! You get a free crate! Yeah, that's awesome! That's what you get straight up! You know that people on the internet do ads for stuff? I don't do ads unless I really like the product! You're gonna love KiwiCo! KiwiCo.com/smarter!

This is the kind of thing that's going to change a child's life! It's right here! Really? Does it have like rainbow sprinkles on it? There's a bunch of ants on it! No way! Is it really? The man, there's a bunch of ants on it! That's it, so that it turned into sugar, and the ants found it before we did! Where? See 'em all?

Oh dude! [Laughter] Yeah, I'm good! Does it smell like sugar? It smells good! It doesn't smell bad! You smell it? It smells like an ice cream shop!