Setup Photographs

Here you can see how we set up our experiment.  Keeping the mouse pads in front of the flash unit, we created a stage for our subject balloon that we could manipulate to get the desired effect.  We kept the flash unit pointed upwards so as to avoid overexposing the photographs.  We used a raised platform with trap doors to drop the balloons at the same time, and draped a black cloth over the set up to create a solid dark background.  There was a string attached to the trap doors that you could pull to release the balloons, and we timed the camera and string pull to catch the photo the instant the flash went off.  Below are two drawings of the set up in action.

Setup before the balloons were released.

Setup after the balloons were released.