Complete Set Up

    In our basic setup, we had a milk container suspended above a surface (depending on the experiment) and we adjusted the nozzle to control the speed of the milk drops.  The nozzle was directly above a photogate, and when the drop went through the gate it set off our flash depending on the delay.  A delay unit was attatched and used to vary the length of time between the drop and the flash so that we could control the stage of splash in our photo.

    The camera was placed about half a meter away from the splash surface, and we held the flash about a meter to a meter and a half away.  As mentioned in some project descriptions, we had to point the flash away from the subject itself because the water/soap/rubber membrane reflected a great deal of the light and gave us results that were overexposed.  We ended up pointing the flash high above the subject at the container itself, which shed light on the entire background and the splash.  This also accounts for some of the shadow around the crown of the splashes in many photos. 

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Milk Drops onto a Rubber Membrane
Milk Drops in Water
Milk Drops into Liquid Soap
All Star Gallery