- Hey, it's me Destin. Welcome back to Smarter Everyday. Today, we're in rural Tennessee for an actual artillery competition. And if you learn anything from this truck that's coming up behind me. This is pretty legit. There's dudes from all over the country that have actual cannons and we're gonna learn about them today. Pretty sure this guy's gonna hit me. Anyway, I've got two high speed cameras. We're gonna learn about
cannons of all types. Let's get smarter everyday. (upbeat music) Okay, this is Matt Brothers
and this is your land, right? - That's correct. - [Destin] And so those are
your chickens over there? - It is. - [Destin] What do they think about this? - Well, they're... Hopefully won't get too alarmed, but they'll hopefully be alright. - So the question is. How does this happen? You own this land.
- Right - And you just let people
come from all over to shoot? - Well, yes. About 10 years ago a local roofer who has a cannon that lives around here. He came and roofed my mother's house. Saw the farm. Saw the potential for
being a wonderful place to cure, safe to have
an activity like this. So he asked if he could do it and I reluctantly said
yes, we'll give it a try. I found out that they're
very professional, they did a wonderful job organizing it keeping everything safe and
just had a wonderful time and we've done it ever since. - That's awesome. So have you ever been scared
about anything happening on your land or anything? - No, I've been vary comfortable. Again, the first year, I
was a little skeptical. Cause I had no clue what they were doing. But once they showed me
what they were capable of and how they were able to manage it. No problem.
- That's awesome. Well, thank you for doing
this with your land, I appreciate it. - You bet, Des. - The interesting thing
about this shoot is there's two high speed cameras. The V2511, that I normally
use, ultra high-speed but there's also the new camera, the V2640 that I borrowed from Vision Research. It has a higher resolution chip on it, a sensor, so we're gonna
get a good trade off between ultra high-speed
and beautiful imagery. Another interesting thing is, I get to explain those facts to people that are dressed like
they're in the civil war. Yeah, guys, my name is Destin. We have the newest high-speed camera in the country here,
actually, it's awesome. It's literally the best
footage you can get right now. After a quick meeting
about safety and a prayer, it was time to roll out the thunder. You know it's about to get real when you're unloading the cannon. (banjo music) Okay, here we go, this is awesome. Are you ready? Three, two, one fire! (cannon fires) (man mumbles) - This is nuts. This is like stupid nuts. - [Man] That's pretty close. - Like all these, old gray-beard dudes, you've got the young guys doing the work, you've got some high speed, it's pretty rad. (banjo music) - Whoa. Look at all the unburnt powder! (cannon slowly fires) (cannon fires) - [Man] Whooo! - [Man] Fire! (cannon fires) (man talks) (cannon fires) (cannon slowly fires) - Right there. - Oh wow, it's neat
- [Woman] Oh, look at that. (cannon fires) (cannon fires) (people mumbling) (cannon slowly fires) (cannon fires) (people cheer and clap) (cannon slowly fires) - Three second interval! On my command! Fire! (cannon fires) Two three fire! (cannon fires) One two three fire! (cannon fires) One two three fire! - [Man] I shoulda got over there. (cannon fires) (cannons slowly fires) (cannon fires) - [Man] It hit the bottom left one again. - [Man] Fire! (cannon fires) (cannon slowly fires) - [Man] Gun number seven, prepare to fire! Fire! (cannon fires) - [Man] Keep going. - [Destin] Whoa! (laughs) Wow, I'm glad we were clear! I'm really glad we were cleared back cause that went a long ways! That's like 20 feet! (men grunt) - [Man] Number 4, fire! (cannon fires) - These videos are amazing to me. There's a lot of mechanics
going on that my brain really likes to hone in on. There's two things in particular I want to focus on with you. Number one, the gun carriage itself. That's the wooden structure, the wheels and all that
stuff around the gun. These are reproductions made by the Amish. But the people that
originally designed these. I have to believe that
they would love to watch slow motion of that gun
carriage absorbing the recoil of the cannon itself. I mean, here we are in the modern world, we get to watch it just for fun. But back in the day, think
about what the person that designed that would be thinking about as they watched this in slow motion. (cannon slowly fires) The second thing I want to look at, specifically on this video, are the shock waves. Now a really easy way
to see the shock wave is just observing the grass
out in front of the barrel. If you look you can see
there's this spherical wave-front that propagates over the ground and you can see how the grass behaves out in front of the cannon. (cannon slowly fires) (cannon slowly fires) Another way to look at shock
waves is something called fast-frame differencing. What you do is take one layer of video and put another layer
of video on top of it and then offset it by a frame or two. What you can do then, is set up a blending
mode called difference, which basically only shows you
the pixels that are different from the one below it. It's a pretty interesting
technique that people use all the time to detect motion for example in like a webcam or something like that. Anyway, if you use this
fast-frame differencing algorithm, technique,
whatever you want to call it, in this particular case, you can see the reflected shock wave bounce up off the ground and
what's neat to me is that that reflected shockwave
doesn't exactly look spherical. You have to look very close. There's not a lot of pixels
here showing you what's going on but it almost looks like
that reflected shockwave is an ellipse because it's
kinda being influenced by all that expanding gas
coming out of the cannon. So I was trying to work up the nerve to see if they would
let me fire one myself, and then I saw this one. And I was like that's me. I have to ask. There it is. (laughs) Here we go, Stan. Three, two, one, (cannon fires) That was awesome. It's not as hard of a pull
as I thought it would be. - [Man] No. That's why everybody does this, and they usually end up popping it off. - [Destin] So you just rotate? - That's all you need to do. - That's awesome! Thank you for letting me do that. (cannon slowly fires) (cannon slowly fires) (cannon slowly fires) (cannon slowly fires) This stuff is interesting
to observe and think about. I mean, there's a lot of
dynamic things going on here, but at the end of the day,
these were weapons of war which is pretty intense to think about. For example, listen to this gentlemen explain canister round to me. It's pretty sobering. - The easiest way I can
describe it for this gun here. It'd look like a 24 oz beer can. With a powder charged
attached to the back of it and you'd have to have
about 30 iron balls in it. And they were all about the
size of a 20 mm projectile. Now the reason they used iron and not lead is because lead flattens out
when it hits something solid like a breast plate or a spine or a hip. Iron goes right through you, right through the man standing
behind you in the rear rank. Hits the ground 20 yards behind you skips up and goes through the next wave. - Gotcha.
- From behind you. It was not uncommon - So it can go against formations. - It was not uncommon
that one round of canister can take out 40 guys with one shot. - So Hunter is about to
shoot a canister round which is what? - It's got 58 caliber balls. I don't know how many, exactly. Packed in saw dust. - [Destin] Gotcha. So this is gonna make a mess. And you're gonna make
a mess out of that hill right over there. - It's what we're trying to. - [Destin] Okay. Awesome, sounds good. - [Man] Fire! (cannon fires) (rounds slowly fire) - Canister rounds are not a joke. That is some serious stuff. What is funny, though,
is every time I caught a civil war soldier
using their cell phone. Which I'll show you right after I eat. (beep) Yeah, that was as rad as it looks. Okay, so that was the first
video on civil war cannons. I want to do one on how to ignite them. That pull-string, how that thing works. And also there's a special
one called a whitworth. I want to talk about that. But, I want to say thanks to
the sponsor of this video, which is Hello Fresh. Tonight is peppercorn steak night which was my request. Hello Fresh is a really cool service. They will send food directly to your house with a full-on recipe for
how to make everything and the perfect amount of
ingredients that you need. We are cooking more and we love it. Tonight we have a meal for two. That's kind of a nice thing, isn't it? - [Woman] It is nice. - [Destin] We don't
get that very often, so we're cooking and we're
about to eat a meal together. Which feels like date night. I'm going to be honest here, we don't get to do that very often. What happened? - [Woman] I started the potatoes. - [Destin] Oh sweet, that means we're doing
the peppercorn thing. - Yes. - [Destin] Yes! (knocking) They send food directly to your house with perfect, pre-measured ingredients. Things you would never think to purchase like truffle oil, like special mushrooms and
stuff, it's pretty cool. You get to figure out how to
cook this stuff by reading this cool recipe card. It's a step by step instruction. It's almost like replicating
somebody's experiment in a lab. It's pretty simple stuff. The sauces are what really amaze me because I don't really
know how to make 'em. But if you followed the recipe, you end up making a fancy sauce. It's really good. Anyway, to get a discount on Hello Fresh, and help Smarter Everyday. Go to hellofresh.com use the promocode "smarter60" That's 60 bucks off your first three meals that's 20 bucks off the
first three meals there for a total of 60 bucks. You help Smarter Everyday. You get tasty meals and
you learn how to cook. Have a good one, bye! (beep) I totally like catching these reenacters with their cell phones because they get really embarrassed and they try to hide it and stuff. So is this the kind of
field comms that they had in the civil war? - Yeah, I was like whoops,
let me hide this cell phone! (laughs) - Go ahead. It's a little strange,
seeing you in your garb holding up a cell phone camera, sir. - Yeah, well. Can't help it. That's the way it is. (laughs) - Get us while we're still alive, man. - [Destin] I'm gonna be
honest with you, sir. You've got the period piece going on and then you got this little lounge chair, what's going on here? - This is actually the 1862 model. (laughs) - [Man] Tell me when we
get to the right spot. - [Destin] What'd you say? - Assisted living bus dropped us off and didn't tell us what to do! (laughs) - [Destin] It looks like
you're on a cannon crew, today. If this video earned your subscription that's really cool! If not, that's also cool. I'm Destin, I hope you enjoyed this. Getting smarter everyday. Have a good one. Bye.
the frame-difference viz at 7:50 is unbelievable
Skip to 6:30 for subtle shock waves. The frame-difference visualization method at 7:15 and after is interesting. The rest is slo-mo boom boom.
High res af
Super cool video. I've always loved cannons, would love to own one.
anyone know the song?
THOSE ABOUT TO ROCK!
Does anyone else see bill clintons head in the barrel flash?
Like the profile.
Is that a scarecrow holding the cannon at 3:22? Haha, they don’t move + that outfit