Newton's laws

Taken for Active Assignment Weekly: Newton's Laws of Motion

Assignment
This week's assignment is to shoot something representing one or more of Newton's three laws of motion.

Law 1: Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by force impressed.

Law 2: The rate of change of momentum of a body is proportional to the resultant force acting on the body and is in the same direction.

Law 3: All forces occur in pairs, and these two forces are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction.

More details can be found in Wikipedia's entry.

Dare: Get all three laws in one, non-triptych shot.

Restriction: No editing (photoshopping) to construct the image, e.g. to make a composite image. Editing is fine for basic editing (e.g. color correction/enhancement, contrast, etc.) and making a diptych or triptych.

What it took
Props:
Two glass balls from a garden ornament we had (and still have if I can get it put together again!)
3 pieces of wood I had laying around

Method:
Make a small ramp from the 3 pieces of wood. One piece placed on a small box and the other two pieces upright on the side of the first.

Place the larger ball on a spot on the floor.

Release the smaller ball on the ramp and let it roll down to hit the larger ball. Having the ramp ensures that speed of the ball is the same from trial shot to trial shot, and hence the photo can be controlled.

Trial shots to experiment with the right time to trigger the camera (ball at end of ramp, ball halfway down ramp, ball just being released, etc).

Rear synch flash, bounced off the ceiling. Without flash, the final resting spots of the balls wouldn't be visible.

Camera on tripod. Remote trigger. The white trails are reflections of a window. By pulling the curtains halfway and selecting a small aperture, natural light was reduced and shutter time extended.

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