#5 Streak Camera
Engineers over at MIT were recently able to develop a streak camera, with the help of which they were able to see the propagation of light in super slow motion. This camera they used, is extremely unique in the fact that it can capture only thin streaks of light and thereby capturing only 2-Dimensional pictures.
The engineers are never the less using the same streak camera in different configurations to obtain amazing results.
#4 How it works...
Only a thin beam of photons is allowed to enter the camera by using a very narrow aperture in the camera. Right before being directed at a perpendicular angle to the slit, the photons are converted into electrons. The electrons arriving are deflected at numerous varying degrees and the other electrons that arrive late are deflected even more when compared to those that arrived before it. All this is done using a rapidly changing electric field.
#3 1 Trillion Frames per Second
Based on this above methods, pictures with a frame rate of 1 Trillion Frames per Second are captured. This principle although enables only two-dimensional pictures to be captured. But with the aid of rotating mirrors a three-dimensional image capturing can be made possible.
You won't believe how accurate this camera is!
#2 Accuracy
The camera in order to capture the propagation of light has to take pictures over and over again with an accuracy rate of picoseconds (1x10−12 s) whilst simultaneously re-positioning the streak camera in order to construct a 3D image. On one time frame of just one nanosecond, the light would have already traveled through the object and data sets amounting to hundreds to thousands are collected.
#1 Watch the video!
Then, a computer algorithm puts together the hundreds of gigabytes of information gathered and organizes it into a single frame picture. Pretty amazing stuff really!
This special camera can be used to perform ultrasound scanning in the medical field and in experiments of all kinds that use light! Know more by watching the video!
