Perceiving Light at Trillion Frames per second !!

I have shown these gifs time and again to people, but they don’t believe me at first when i tell them that this is indeed Light, at a staggering Trillion Frames per second! This was achieved by a technique known as femto-photography at MIT Media Lab.

Is that really how a single photon of light looks?

Unfortunately no! If the experiment was conducted with just one single photon, or with a very small amount of photons, a complete picture of the interaction of the light could not be achieved.

So, what you are actually seeing are Pulses! Pulses contain many photons and the photons interact with each other as well. 

Ergo, this is indeed Light- Light that travels at 299 792 458 m / s captured by Human Intelligence! Wows me every single time!

Thirsty for more?

Check out the TED Talk by Ramesh Raskar.

Source: mit.edu

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Types of Damping

Damping is an influence within or upon an oscillatory system that has the effect of reducing, restricting or preventing its oscillations.

There are 4 types of damping:(in the order of the animations shown)

1. Under Damped System.

The system oscillates (at reduced frequency compared to the undamped case) with the amplitude gradually decreasing to zero.

2. Critically Damped System.

The system returns to equilibrium as quickly as possible without oscillating.

3. Over Damped System.

The system returns to equilibrium without oscillating.

4. Un-Damped System.

The system oscillates at its natural resonant frequency

( Sources: xmdemo, timewarp,wikipedia)