'On Pins and Needles': A Surface Splash Study
Heather Faircloth
November 1 through November 8, 2005

In this project, my goal was to take a more in depth look at splashes, especially those of water drops on different surfaces.  I focused on taking photos of splashes on different push pins, because their surface area and shape were unique to anything I'd ever seen.  I used a similar setup to that of an earlier project in which a group and I studied splashes.  There was a drop bottle suspended above the surface for the splash which allowed me to control the drop rate and the drop fell through a photo gate which triggered the flash.  A delay unit was attached to the photogate and flash, allowing me to control the time of the flash and capture different stages of the splash.  I then placed the surface beneath the drop bottle and had the camera in front to capture the image.  I am pleased with the photos I obtained in this project because they almost all turned out well and I was able to take time to find out what I wanted to observe and then focus in on it, rather than get a short look at a plethora of different techniques.  I feel that I was able to learn more about the nature of the splash, and how it will spread out or splash upwards based on the surface shape.