Check out our clip on this weeks science Friday (May 4th, 2012) http://www.sciencefriday.com/[ ](http://web.archive.org/web/20140312143055/http://www.sciencefriday.com/video/05/04/2012/cracking-the-egg-sprinkler-mystery.html). We are very honored and excited to be on Science Friday again this coming week. The feature is about spinning spheres (eggs) in shallow puddles of water and milk. We have been working on the project for nearly 18 months and we are about to submit our first paper on the subject. Stay tuned for a publication, but for now we hope you will enjoy our video clip on sciencefriday. During the interview process Flora Lichtman talked to Alex Hornstein, who had the original idea for the study in 05′ or 07′ or sometime ago. He reminded her of a clip of me as Marine Man in a movie he shot for our lab. You can watch it here or below.
Update!! I got this email from Alex and I thought it was really interesting.
`My high school teacher wrote me back–it turns out that the original egg photo I saw on his wall was done by one of his students, Jared Hill, using water mixed with elmer’s glue. Here are some of Jared’s photos: http://hiviz.org/hsi/galleries/aapt/contest2003.htm
http://www.aapt.org/programs/contests/pc03full.cfm?Meeting=SM03&Category=Contrived&Placing=1
Jared was in my physics class in high school. I looked him up on facebook and wrote to ask what inspired it, and I just heard back today. Here’s what he said:
Hey Alex! What’s up. I heard about that science Friday thing from Dr. Winters and Dr. Kolena. I was really happy to hear about that. Dr. Winters really drove that egg project. Honestly, I saw those pictures from previous years and I loved them. The entire reason I asked Dr. Winters about that project was because I wanted a picture. We sat around one day throwing out ideas and looking at other projects in high speed photography and I think Dr. Winters brought out that article on the physics of the spinning egg. I wish I’d had the idea, but I can’t take credit. Mostly Dr. Winters, and some really original people who first wrote that article. The funny thing is we took photos all year and they looked horrible. We tried all kinds of different lighting conditions and angles. Finally, on the last day of school during that talent show / presentation (whatever it was) we got something that was far, far better than any other picture we’d taken.
…and the saga continues. That’s about as far as I’m going to dig. But somewhere out in the void, many degrees of separation away, there’s a nerdy dude with a high speed camera who was sitting bored at his breakfast table, looked over at a hardboard egg and glass of milk, and had a wonderful idea.
I think the original article can be found at G. Gutierrez, “Fluid flow up the wall of a spinning egg,” American journal of physics, 66, 442 (1998).
–me