Jets!!

Some cool videos of what hap­pens when a sphere falls into sand…

…from NPR’s Sci­ence Fri­day.

…from Dis­cover Mag­a­zine.

…from the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago.

Below is my favorite:

This reminds me of when I worked for Domino’s Pizza in Bloom­ing­ton, Indi­ana. I was a Man­ager Trainee (inden­tured ser­vent). One day we were set­ting up for open­ing and I was car­ry­ing buck­ets of sauce from the walk-​in cooler to the make line. A bucket of sauce was maybe two gal­lons of sauce.

I walked out of the cooler and slipped and fell. Every­thing hap­pened in slow motion. As I started to fall my pri­mary con­cern was to not spill the sauce. So I held on to the rim of the bucket tight with both hands and tried to “catch” my fall with the upright bucket. I was sur­pris­ingly suc­cess­ful at this and for a mil­lisec­ond I thought all was going to be well.

But then the sauce moved. It hol­lowed at the mid­dle and then gath­ered together and rose in a col­umn to the ceil­ing. There was very lit­tle left in the still upright and unmoved bucket when all was said and done. The sauce was on the ceil­ing, the top of the cooler, the table, the floor, and me.

It was worth it.

The above video’s also bring to mind one of my favorite sci­ence fic­tion reads from the six­ties: A Fall of Moon­dust by Arthur C. Clarke in which a moon vehi­cle sinks into the fine dust of the moon’s surface.

Tagged as: Arthur C. Clarke, Domino's Pizza, Slow Motion