The goal of our project was to use high speed imaging techniques to capture images of a hydrogen balloon explosion and a pendulum expelled by the explosion in order to measure the speed of that pendulum using a rotating clock method. Some other members of the NCSSM community in the past have also pursued similar endeavors. They include:

- The Pyromaniacs Scott Butson, Stuart Pratt, and Robert Watts who, in 2000, took pictures and video of exploding hydrogen balloons.

- The H₂O Project, whose members Brian Sweeney '03 and Tim Collier '03 undertook the exploding of hydrogen balloons to observe the visual properties of the explosions of different mixtures of hydrogen and oxygen gas.

We went a little farther, building on the success of these past groups by using things they learned as beginnings for our own project. One of the main things we used from these past groups was the triggering device used by The H₂O Project. We used the knowledge gained from them and technology we built ourselves in order to find the maximum velocity of a pendulum expelled by the explosion.