HOW TO – Make a “Time Fountain”

Technology
HOW TO – Make a “Time Fountain”

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Nathan made an incredible “Time Fountain” fluorescent drops illuminated by LEDs, he writes – “I suppose it might be called a “Backwards in Time Fountain” or a “Time Manipulation Fountain” but I figured those titles would be a bit long. Using an old battery-powered small fountain as a base, drops are pumped through a brass tube, falling out of the end at a very regular interval. A microcontroller coordinates the speed of the pump and the strobe rate of the LEDs.”Link.

16 thoughts on “HOW TO – Make a “Time Fountain”

  1. n3ldan says:

    They have a (much large) one of these installed in one of MIT’s building. There are two streams, which collide in the middle. It is very cool, although you can’t touch it and control the collision.

  2. SonicReducer says:

    now this is a cool hack!

  3. natetrue says:

    Ah, I hadn’t heard of the MIT one before. Seems like the right place to have one.

    http://www.airynothing.com/photos/2005_11_boston/2005_11_boston-Pages/Image52.html

    Seems a bit blurry, though I know how hard it is to take proper pictures and video of this kind of thing. I’d love to see it with my own eyes.

  4. aolshove says:

    Somebody please mirror the site. All you nerds have used up the poor guys bandwidth and I wanna build one too! :-)

  5. ivanski says:

    Not to knock this (it’s very cool to see how to build one), but this is known as the Water Piddler, it’s one of Doc Edgerton’s classic demonstrations:

    http://web.mit.edu/Edgerton/www/WaterPiddler.html
    http://caes.mit.edu/projects/edgerton/screen03_piddler.html

    I suspect it’s easier to take pictures of Doc’s because it uses a full blown strobelight (the original purpose of those being high-speed photography), not just LEDs.

  6. DGary says:

    Looks like a nine inch nails video, very cool effect

  7. Windell_Oskay says:

    Beautifully executed!

  8. JohnKit says:

    Very cool. I’ll have to try to build one of these.

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